Broken glass. Broken furniture. The stone walls were full of holes. His attendants had run in fear. He stood alone in the wreckage, his hands threatening to tear out great clumps of that dark hair of his.
He had seen. It wouldn't have been as bad if it had been during the day. Then he could have turned away, pretended not to see. But it had been on their time. How could he deny it now? How could he pretend that there was nothing there? He'd watched his wife silently slip farther and farther away from him, and though their time together was still full of passion and desire, there was something else she wanted.
There had to be. Otherwise, why did she flirt with this upstart of a titan? She'd never needed to flirt with him; she'd learned it elsewhere, and it was not hard to discover from where.
And now this. Now this. Yes, she'd come home immediately, yes, she'd avoided Krios. It was the only thing that kept him from losing his mind completely. It was the only thing that kept him from going to her like this, in this rage that did not seem to have an end. She had come home. But just before she took flight, just before she abandoned the titan, he had seen.
Hesitation.
She wanted it. She may not have realized that he saw saw her pause that fraction of a second, she may not even have known that she did it. But she did. And he had seen.
He was losing his wife.
And he didn't know why.
Finally, slowly, he lifted his head, his hands falling to the hem of his tunic. He tugged it straight, smoothed the wrinkles with his palms, then ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it.
He took a breath. He took another.
And then he climbed the stairs up, up... And stood before his wife, who seemed to know. Who waited for him in their sitting area.
Stepping into the center of the room, he turned around, looking blankly for somewhere to sit. There were plenty of spaces, but he had always sat down beside her before. Now it didn't seem right. After a second or two, he settled for the chair across from her.
Wetting his lips, he opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of what was on his tongue. Checking himself, he rephrased.
She knew of the disturbance in their home - how could she not? She had seen the attendants' flight, felt the stones quake, and the glass break. But she sat, twisting her hair, worrying her lip, painfully aware that she was the cause for this outburst, this rage.
Ere did not do such things. These things did not happen with him.
The Darkness had infinite potential as a destructive force, but it was always calculated, careful.
This was neither of these.
This was pain - this was the way Erebos was expressing his pain.
When he entered the room, her midnight gaze fell on him, and she only wanted to go to him, to hold him, to apologize forever and ever for the little she had done, and what she hadn't done, but... perhaps had wanted to do.
She almost got up. But did not.
When he spoke, she looked down at the ends of her curling hair, wrapped so tightly about her fingers that she could no longer feel her fingertips. Slowly, she blinked, and began unwrapping it.
The rage that he had managed to tamp down roared up again. He shook with it. Clenching his jaw so that his godsdamned mouth wouldn't open, he waited for it to pass, hoped that it would pass.
It did.
No, it did not. It became more manageable as the time crept on. As the silence crept on. Mortal tombs had more sound in it than their sitting room now.
Finally, he exhaled.
"Tell me," he said flatly.
Tell me why you are so attracted to a god who is not your husband. Tell me why you insist on this silly flirtation. Tell me why I'm not good enough for you, tell me why I am not enough of anything for you. Tell me why your heart is leading you away from me. Tell me what I have done to drive you from my side. Tell me why our intimate moments are so full of fire, but you are not satisfied. Tell me everything.
He did not expect that anything that came out of her mouth could ever answer these things. But he had to ask. He had to know.
"Tell me," he repeated. "Spare nothing."
Spare me this hurt. I do not want it. I do not know how to abide it.
He fell silent. He sat. He watched his wife, the deepest love of his heart, and the deepest pain.
Her fingers had slipped down from her hair to her chiton. There, they gripped the soft, thin material ruthlessly as her eyes closed.
"Tell me," he demanded.
"Spare nothing," he specified.
Tell him... tell him what? This was not his burden to bear, it was never meant to have been his to bear... but she had been weak, and she had been stupid, and she had played with fire.
And now they both burned.
"I. You know," she whispered. "You know what happened. It was... it was harmless... the... the flirting. It."
She turned her head left. Anywhere but at him - she would look anywhere but at him.
"It... they were only words... looks, laughing. Talking. I."
It was unlike Nyx to be so ineloquent. Words came easily to her; she usually had no trouble articulating her feelings. But she felt that every syllable she spoke had to be dragged out violently, like fish hooks in her throat.
She could feel the pain coming from him in waves. Her Ere...
He heard her guilt. He heard her remorse. He knew that if it were true ... if it were only words, looks, laughing... then she would be defensive. Not like this. Not this stuttering shade of a wife.
He stood from his chair and took a step toward her.
And then changed his mind, circling around the chair where he sat. He walked to the back of the room and started pacing. It was never meant to hurt you. She said that.
She said that, and rather than get angry, he tried to understand. But as much as he tried, he did not understand. How else was it supposed to feel to him? Was he supposed to smile as his wife smiled at others? At him? Was he supposed to pat her on the cheek and call her precious and lovely when she was flirting with other men? They were each other's. It had always been thus. They were made for each other.
She needed him. And she did these things that pushed him away, all the while claiming that she didn't want to push him away.
He could never understand that. Was she holding anything back?
He looked over at her again, his beautiful wife, looking broken... huddled into herself, her hands tying themselves into knots in her chiton. He did not want to see her like that. He did not want her to feel like that.
Again, he took a step forward, going to her.
Again, he changed his mind. He turned his back to her, running his hands through his hair and biting back the things he felt buring their way from his chest to his mouth.
More silence, like the silence in a frozen waste, stretching on endlessly over planes of ice and snow that had never melted.
He had to say something. He had to do something. He knew what he wanted to do, and knew that it was unacceptable. Raising his voice to Nyx had never been an option. Nyx was made for gentleness. He could be violent to everyone, everyone, except Nyx.
Closing his eyes, he grit his teeth and forcibly collected the pain within him. He compacted it, he closed it over with the force of his will. And he swallowed it. Something changed in him.
Turning, this time he walked unerringly toward his wife, stopping only when he was before her. He held his hands down to her.
Every moment of the silence between them crushed her, crushed her heart into pulp. Reckless, stupid, foolish woman. Accursed, faithless woman. It would not be so bad if she could kill this thing inside of her; if she could simply accept her Fate to be with Erebos, and only Erebos, forever. It was not such a bad Fate! It was a good Fate, a very good Fate! She loved Erebos. She wanted Erebos. She needed Erebos. She was convinced that there was none better than him anywhere in all the Universe. It was a fortunate Fate indeed to be with him, and only him, forever.
But it was not her Fate.
She had seen this long ago, before she had handed the power to her daughters. And oh, how she tried to scrub her memory clean of that knowledge, to suppress it, to fight it, to suffocate it until it were naught but a dead thing to be scraped from her consciousness!
But it would not die. It could not die.
Sometimes she flew during the day, invisibly, separate from him, though he was never far behind. Sometimes she flew, and sometimes, for a very, very brief moment, she tasted freedom.
Or perhaps she'd only dreamed it.
And now, he stood before her, offering his hands to her. He spoke in his quiet, gentle tone, and it undid her.
She couldn't bear this. She couldn't bear his gentleness, not now. Not when it was him who was hurting so badly. Not when it was she who had made it so.
Her eyes could not rise to meet his face, but she did slip her hands into his, holding them tightly, with the same tenacity as they had gripped her chiton and her hair.
"Ere." her voice was quite, quite soft, and on the verge of breaking.
There was a sound, faint, not quite a moan, not quite a gasp. It came when she said his name like that. It was the solitary herald of the pieces of his heart leaving his body and flying to her. His heart had always belonged to her, in pieces or not.
He drew her up in a single, smooth movement, leaving no room for argument. Before she could pull away, before she could say a word, he wrapped her little frame up in his arms, lifting her off her feet and holding her against his chest. No matter what happened, she was still his wife, and he would always be her husband. No matter what happened, he wouldn't let her go. He couldn't. Not now.
It had been perfect before. It had been beautiful. They had their children, so many children, they brought them up in the way that they needed. They let them go free when it was their time. And all through it, he loved her. She loved him. They had each other only. There were no others, as he had first feared there would be. Their love was pure. Innocent in all the ways that were good. Their love was pristine.
And then.
"Nyx," he whispered against her hair, his voice raw and filled with desire for something that no longer existed. He was so afraid. He was so afraid that he was losing her to someone else. He was afraid that she would leave; he had always been afraid that she would leave, from the very beginning.
Because that was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. Let the whole world fall down around them. If he had her. Then he had everything. They had the power to rebuild most everything that fell. But if they did not have each other....
.... what could ever be the point?
He was kissing her face, kissing her hair, kissing that heartbreakingly beautiful column of her neck. He didn't want to let her go. But the tighter he held, the more he could feel her slipping away.
He did not understand. He tried, he genuinely tried, but he could not understand it. And she could not tell him.
He filled his lungs with the subtle, sweet scent of his wife. He memorized just how it felt to have her this close. He burned it into his mind, in case. Just in case.
And then, silently, slowly, he released her, letting her slip back lightly to the floor. His thumbs rubbed gently over the tops of her shoulders, and then he dropped his hands away from her.
He had so many things he wanted to say, and only one thing that made it into speech.
"I love you. Nyx."
Wistfully touching her cheek with the pads of his fingertips, he murmured, "You are mine. I am yours."
It sounded like bewilderment. In a way, it was. Why would she...
But there were no answers.
He dropped his hand. He would stay here. But only for a few moments. Only in the hopes that she could say something, anything, to make this right.
Her eyes closed as he embraced her, pulled her tightly to him, and it was the most bittersweet sensation she had ever felt. His lips against her cheek, her curls, her throat; his arms tight around her; arms that made her feel so safe...
arms that made her feel suffocated.
She could not ruin this. She could not hurt him this way. He was her own
(she was his own)
and the father of her children; her best, most beloved friend, and oldest companion. He was her love, her heart, and no power, no freedom, no Fate could be worth hurting him for.
Could it?
And she went about the business of a compression of her own. Once again, she gathered the ache, and the longing, and the quiet, lonely desire for what she would never allow to be, and pushed it down. Neatly, meticulously, so that every scrap of feeling aside from her love for Erebos, her love for her family, her desire to be a good Wife and Mother, was collected, she pushed it all down, pressing it into a tight, tiny box that she anchored to the very bottom of her soul.
That done, she finally looked at Ere, and put her hands to his face, looked into his eyes, and said softly, raggedly,
"I love you, my Ere. More than anything. More than anything else that could ever be."
Her thumbs stroked his cheekbones, and she paused.
"I am yours, and I will only ever be yours. And you are mine, and you will only ever be mine."
She kissed him; briefly, desperately, and pulled away again to say, looking into his eyes again,
"I will never leave you. No matter what happens, I will always be your wife, even... if... we are apart, even if you hate me, I will never leave you. I have sworn this before our mother and all the gods and all of Creation, and I mean it now as I did then."
Her words were prophetic, and she didn't want them to be. Her words spoke of things that she didn't even know she knew anymore. But she said them, and she did not release him. Her eyes bored into his, willing him to hear her, willing these words to help him somehow.
He closed his eyes, her thumbs rubbing pleasure-pain over the sharp bones of his face. Her words did much the same. They were beautiful, and should have mended the holes in his heart.
But that hesitation had ripped through him as surely as any infidelity would have. And those wounds did not heal so rapidly as he would have liked.
Opening his eyes, he saw her looking so ferociously at him, willing him to believe her. He gave her a small smile, a smile that did not feel like a smile to him. He took her hands and kissed the open palms, one after the other, before setting them gently -- firmly -- at her sides.
"I."
His eyes skipped over her face and his gaze drifted over her head to the hidden corridor, to the stairs that led to his private study.
He should say something to her vows. He should take them and cherish them and return something of himself to her for her giving words. He wanted to believe her. In a way, he did. He knew that she loved him.
But there was something... Something he could not pinpont. There was something within Nyx that was dangerous to Them. And she would not name it. More and more, Erebos was beginning to realize that he could do nothing about it.
"I wish to be alone for a while," he said to her. "There are things I should see to."
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her forehead. And then he turned abruptly, and left.
His private study was a wreck. Firmly setting up shields around his sanctuary, shields that not even his beloved wife could penetrate without drastic measures, he began to set his study to rights again.
Broken glass. Broken furniture. The stone walls were full of holes. His attendants had run in fear. He stood alone in the wreckage, his hands threatening to tear out great clumps of that dark hair of his.
He had seen. It wouldn't have been as bad if it had been during the day. Then he could have turned away, pretended not to see. But it had been on their time. How could he deny it now? How could he pretend that there was nothing there? He'd watched his wife silently slip farther and farther away from him, and though their time together was still full of passion and desire, there was something else she wanted.
There had to be. Otherwise, why did she flirt with this upstart of a titan? She'd never needed to flirt with him; she'd learned it elsewhere, and it was not hard to discover from where.
And now this. Now this. Yes, she'd come home immediately, yes, she'd avoided Krios. It was the only thing that kept him from losing his mind completely. It was the only thing that kept him from going to her like this, in this rage that did not seem to have an end. She had come home. But just before she took flight, just before she abandoned the titan, he had seen.
Hesitation.
She wanted it. She may not have realized that he saw saw her pause that fraction of a second, she may not even have known that she did it. But she did. And he had seen.
He was losing his wife.
And he didn't know why.
Finally, slowly, he lifted his head, his hands falling to the hem of his tunic. He tugged it straight, smoothed the wrinkles with his palms, then ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it.
He took a breath. He took another.
And then he climbed the stairs up, up... And stood before his wife, who seemed to know. Who waited for him in their sitting area.
Stepping into the center of the room, he turned around, looking blankly for somewhere to sit. There were plenty of spaces, but he had always sat down beside her before. Now it didn't seem right. After a second or two, he settled for the chair across from her.
Wetting his lips, he opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of what was on his tongue. Checking himself, he rephrased.
"Welcome home. Nyx."
Reply
She knew of the disturbance in their home - how could she not? She had seen the attendants' flight, felt the stones quake, and the glass break. But she sat, twisting her hair, worrying her lip, painfully aware that she was the cause for this outburst, this rage.
Ere did not do such things. These things did not happen with him.
The Darkness had infinite potential as a destructive force, but it was always calculated, careful.
This was neither of these.
This was pain - this was the way Erebos was expressing his pain.
When he entered the room, her midnight gaze fell on him, and she only wanted to go to him, to hold him, to apologize forever and ever for the little she had done, and what she hadn't done, but... perhaps had wanted to do.
She almost got up. But did not.
When he spoke, she looked down at the ends of her curling hair, wrapped so tightly about her fingers that she could no longer feel her fingertips. Slowly, she blinked, and began unwrapping it.
"Thank you, Erebos," she whispered.
She found she couldn't look at him.
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That was all.
The rage that he had managed to tamp down roared up again. He shook with it. Clenching his jaw so that his godsdamned mouth wouldn't open, he waited for it to pass, hoped that it would pass.
It did.
No, it did not. It became more manageable as the time crept on. As the silence crept on. Mortal tombs had more sound in it than their sitting room now.
Finally, he exhaled.
"Tell me," he said flatly.
Tell me why you are so attracted to a god who is not your husband. Tell me why you insist on this silly flirtation. Tell me why I'm not good enough for you, tell me why I am not enough of anything for you. Tell me why your heart is leading you away from me. Tell me what I have done to drive you from my side. Tell me why our intimate moments are so full of fire, but you are not satisfied. Tell me everything.
He did not expect that anything that came out of her mouth could ever answer these things. But he had to ask. He had to know.
"Tell me," he repeated. "Spare nothing."
Spare me this hurt. I do not want it. I do not know how to abide it.
He fell silent. He sat. He watched his wife, the deepest love of his heart, and the deepest pain.
Reply
"Tell me," he demanded.
"Spare nothing," he specified.
Tell him... tell him what? This was not his burden to bear, it was never meant to have been his to bear... but she had been weak, and she had been stupid, and she had played with fire.
And now they both burned.
"I. You know," she whispered. "You know what happened. It was... it was harmless... the... the flirting. It."
She turned her head left. Anywhere but at him - she would look anywhere but at him.
"It... they were only words... looks, laughing. Talking. I."
It was unlike Nyx to be so ineloquent. Words came easily to her; she usually had no trouble articulating her feelings. But she felt that every syllable she spoke had to be dragged out violently, like fish hooks in her throat.
She could feel the pain coming from him in waves. Her Ere...
"It was never meant to hurt you."
Reply
He stood from his chair and took a step toward her.
And then changed his mind, circling around the chair where he sat. He walked to the back of the room and started pacing. It was never meant to hurt you. She said that.
She said that, and rather than get angry, he tried to understand. But as much as he tried, he did not understand. How else was it supposed to feel to him? Was he supposed to smile as his wife smiled at others? At him? Was he supposed to pat her on the cheek and call her precious and lovely when she was flirting with other men? They were each other's. It had always been thus. They were made for each other.
She needed him. And she did these things that pushed him away, all the while claiming that she didn't want to push him away.
He could never understand that. Was she holding anything back?
He looked over at her again, his beautiful wife, looking broken... huddled into herself, her hands tying themselves into knots in her chiton. He did not want to see her like that. He did not want her to feel like that.
Again, he took a step forward, going to her.
Again, he changed his mind. He turned his back to her, running his hands through his hair and biting back the things he felt buring their way from his chest to his mouth.
More silence, like the silence in a frozen waste, stretching on endlessly over planes of ice and snow that had never melted.
He had to say something. He had to do something. He knew what he wanted to do, and knew that it was unacceptable. Raising his voice to Nyx had never been an option. Nyx was made for gentleness. He could be violent to everyone, everyone, except Nyx.
Closing his eyes, he grit his teeth and forcibly collected the pain within him. He compacted it, he closed it over with the force of his will. And he swallowed it. Something changed in him.
Turning, this time he walked unerringly toward his wife, stopping only when he was before her. He held his hands down to her.
"Come here," he said quietly.
Reply
But it was not her Fate.
She had seen this long ago, before she had handed the power to her daughters. And oh, how she tried to scrub her memory clean of that knowledge, to suppress it, to fight it, to suffocate it until it were naught but a dead thing to be scraped from her consciousness!
But it would not die. It could not die.
Sometimes she flew during the day, invisibly, separate from him, though he was never far behind. Sometimes she flew, and sometimes, for a very, very brief moment, she tasted freedom.
Or perhaps she'd only dreamed it.
And now, he stood before her, offering his hands to her. He spoke in his quiet, gentle tone, and it undid her.
She couldn't bear this. She couldn't bear his gentleness, not now. Not when it was him who was hurting so badly. Not when it was she who had made it so.
Her eyes could not rise to meet his face, but she did slip her hands into his, holding them tightly, with the same tenacity as they had gripped her chiton and her hair.
"Ere." her voice was quite, quite soft, and on the verge of breaking.
Reply
He drew her up in a single, smooth movement, leaving no room for argument. Before she could pull away, before she could say a word, he wrapped her little frame up in his arms, lifting her off her feet and holding her against his chest. No matter what happened, she was still his wife, and he would always be her husband. No matter what happened, he wouldn't let her go. He couldn't. Not now.
It had been perfect before. It had been beautiful. They had their children, so many children, they brought them up in the way that they needed. They let them go free when it was their time. And all through it, he loved her. She loved him. They had each other only. There were no others, as he had first feared there would be. Their love was pure. Innocent in all the ways that were good. Their love was pristine.
And then.
"Nyx," he whispered against her hair, his voice raw and filled with desire for something that no longer existed. He was so afraid. He was so afraid that he was losing her to someone else. He was afraid that she would leave; he had always been afraid that she would leave, from the very beginning.
Because that was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. Let the whole world fall down around them. If he had her. Then he had everything. They had the power to rebuild most everything that fell. But if they did not have each other....
.... what could ever be the point?
He was kissing her face, kissing her hair, kissing that heartbreakingly beautiful column of her neck. He didn't want to let her go. But the tighter he held, the more he could feel her slipping away.
He did not understand. He tried, he genuinely tried, but he could not understand it. And she could not tell him.
He filled his lungs with the subtle, sweet scent of his wife. He memorized just how it felt to have her this close. He burned it into his mind, in case. Just in case.
And then, silently, slowly, he released her, letting her slip back lightly to the floor. His thumbs rubbed gently over the tops of her shoulders, and then he dropped his hands away from her.
He had so many things he wanted to say, and only one thing that made it into speech.
"I love you. Nyx."
Wistfully touching her cheek with the pads of his fingertips, he murmured, "You are mine. I am yours."
It sounded like bewilderment. In a way, it was. Why would she...
But there were no answers.
He dropped his hand. He would stay here. But only for a few moments. Only in the hopes that she could say something, anything, to make this right.
Reply
arms that made her feel suffocated.
She could not ruin this. She could not hurt him this way. He was her own
(she was his own)
and the father of her children; her best, most beloved friend, and oldest companion. He was her love, her heart, and no power, no freedom, no Fate could be worth hurting him for.
Could it?
And she went about the business of a compression of her own. Once again, she gathered the ache, and the longing, and the quiet, lonely desire for what she would never allow to be, and pushed it down. Neatly, meticulously, so that every scrap of feeling aside from her love for Erebos, her love for her family, her desire to be a good Wife and Mother, was collected, she pushed it all down, pressing it into a tight, tiny box that she anchored to the very bottom of her soul.
That done, she finally looked at Ere, and put her hands to his face, looked into his eyes, and said softly, raggedly,
"I love you, my Ere. More than anything. More than anything else that could ever be."
Her thumbs stroked his cheekbones, and she paused.
"I am yours, and I will only ever be yours. And you are mine, and you will only ever be mine."
She kissed him; briefly, desperately, and pulled away again to say, looking into his eyes again,
"I will never leave you. No matter what happens, I will always be your wife, even... if... we are apart, even if you hate me, I will never leave you. I have sworn this before our mother and all the gods and all of Creation, and I mean it now as I did then."
Her words were prophetic, and she didn't want them to be. Her words spoke of things that she didn't even know she knew anymore. But she said them, and she did not release him. Her eyes bored into his, willing him to hear her, willing these words to help him somehow.
Reply
But that hesitation had ripped through him as surely as any infidelity would have. And those wounds did not heal so rapidly as he would have liked.
Opening his eyes, he saw her looking so ferociously at him, willing him to believe her. He gave her a small smile, a smile that did not feel like a smile to him. He took her hands and kissed the open palms, one after the other, before setting them gently -- firmly -- at her sides.
"I."
His eyes skipped over her face and his gaze drifted over her head to the hidden corridor, to the stairs that led to his private study.
He should say something to her vows. He should take them and cherish them and return something of himself to her for her giving words. He wanted to believe her. In a way, he did. He knew that she loved him.
But there was something... Something he could not pinpont. There was something within Nyx that was dangerous to Them. And she would not name it. More and more, Erebos was beginning to realize that he could do nothing about it.
"I wish to be alone for a while," he said to her. "There are things I should see to."
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her forehead. And then he turned abruptly, and left.
His private study was a wreck. Firmly setting up shields around his sanctuary, shields that not even his beloved wife could penetrate without drastic measures, he began to set his study to rights again.
He remained there for two mortal months.
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