3 angsty Animorphs fics + 1 SPN ficlet
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: fem!Dean
Rating: PG
Prompt: 50 words: Supernatural, girl!Dean, The first time a gun lays in her hand, it’s the closest thing to religion she’ll ever know. The weight becomes her hymns, the bullets her bible and the silence it brings her only salvation.
Dee's guns are everything to her. Behind her family and her Baby, they're the only things that've always stuck with her. They've saved her life and they've saved other people's lives and man, do they get her laid.
But mostly, shooting one was the first time she'd made Dad proud.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Marco(/Rachel)
Spoilers: #54
Rating: PG
Prompt: Animorphs, Marco (/Rachel), he drinks a silent toast to her (post war)
You've got a baseball cap pulled low over your eyes and think if there were someone to talk to you might make a crack about cowboys and ask if you looked like John Wayne. The setting fits, too: some hole-in-the-wall place that's nothing but a grease spot on most maps and doesn't ask for ID. You could go to a nicer place and flash your card, sure; no barkeep's going to turn down this eighteen year old's order. But you're not looking for people to recognize you, to cheer and snap photos and ask for autographs, not today of all days.
Independence Day. That's what people have started calling it, a stupid joke about an alien movie that no one watches anymore, not since it started feeling like more than fiction. You think you probably started it, on some talk show or another. The day the Earth shook off its Yeerk oppressors and stomped them into the ground; that's how people will think of it. You consider the people who brought about the first Independence Day, way back when. You never paid enough attention in history class to remember much about them, but you wonder if they ever felt like this.
You study the bartop. It's got a layer of grime half an inch thick and would probably need about two buckets of cleaner and a steel wool pad before it would come even close to passing a health inspection. The glassware is passably clean, at least, though it could use a run through a dishwasher or two.
Behind you, a group of drunken rednecks begins loudly toasting the Animorphs or, more accurately, loudly cussing out the Yeerks. To these people the species is nothing but the Big Bad, Evil Incarnate, the Black in a history book of Black and White Morality. Winners write the history books, after all, but you guess that's why you don't feel like much of a winner.
You hunch your shoulders and tune them out, something you've always been good at. You haven't even touched your first glass yet, even though you've been here an hour, and the bartender is starting to look at you a little weird, but you've paid for your drink and if you want to stare at the greasy bartop through the lens of an undrunk beer then you damn well can.
You don't know what you're doing here, only that you didn't want to spend tonight alone in your too-big mansion, and you don't want to go out clubbing with people who don't give a shit. Your parents might understand, you think, but it's when you're not a kid anymore that you wish a hug from Mom or Dad could make the whole world right.
So you spend the night alone in this dump instead, only not alone, because there's always that ghost hovering over your shoulder, with her possibly mocking, probably reckless, definitely insane laugh. And that's what you're doing here, you think, as you raise your glass in a silent toast and drain it dry. You stand and throw down a tip, adjust your cap so you don't do something embarrassing like trip over a table or walk into a doorframe. As you head out into the night, you think maybe next you'll go see Jake.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Rachel, others
Rating: PG-13 for language, sexism, abuse
Prompt: Animorphs canon AU fest: MM#3!verse, Rachel, a day in her life at the reeducation camp
They drove me to the camp in the back of a police car. It was a long drive, and I stretched out on the cracked vinyl backseat and closed my eyes. When I asked to use the bathroom, the driver slammed on the brakes in the middle of the freeway. His partner got out and came around to the back door, cuffed me over the head with a heavy hand. I blinked and briefly saw stars. "Get out," he said, grabbing me roughly by the shoulders. He dragged me over to the side of the road and forced me to squat down in the shoulder to do my business there, out in the open. He locked me inside the car again and then got in himself, turning around to glare at me through the bars. "Don't speak to me again, bitch," he said. I didn't, but I wanted to.
The fence was high and sturdy, but not topped with barbed wire like I expected. Then I saw the jagged voltage signs posted at regular intervals and realized why. The driver rolled down the window and the guard at the gate leaned in, looking at me like I was something dirty. "Another one, Bill?" he said, wrinkling his nose at me. "You know where to go."
The building was squat and gray and built like a prison. Bill and the foulmouthed one handed me off to a pair of uniformed guards at the door. A short man with a thin nose stood on the steps, arms folded, watching me.
"Careful," said Bill. "She's a fighter, this one." I had the bruises to prove it, too.
"Don't worry," said the short man with a faint sneer. "We'll soon fix that."
The first room they led me to held nothing but a line of chairs, and long locks of hair strewn across the floor like flower petals. I saw a few curls of defiantly dyed blue, and a pile of naturally vivid red still in its careful braid. They sat me down on the chair farthest from the door. It was hard plastic, and cold.
One of the guards pointed at the open black straps on the arms. "Are you going to cooperate?" he said, trying to look threatening. It worked, sort of. Pick your battles, I thought. I didn't say anything, but I held still as they sheered off my ponytail and left me with a head of prickly yellow stubble.
Then they took me to a smaller room and left me alone with a small bundle wrapped in brown paper. They told me to undress and shut the door. Regretfully, I shrugged off my favorite jean jacket and stepped out of the skirt daringly hemmed to just above my knees. Pants, of course, were out of the question. It was only when I was down to my underclothes that I noticed the little red light blinking from the security camera installed in the corner. Scowling, I reached up and hung my jacket over the lens. They'd had their show for the day.
Inside the paper wrapping was a full-length dress, blandly tan with a white blouse. The collar was stiff and higher in the back, so that it poked at the base of my skull when I held my head up. Fuming, I lowered my head and tucked in my chin. The dress draped loosely over me and felt like a burlap sack, and the shoes were a size too small and pinched when I walked. I left my old clothes where I'd dropped them and banged on the door till they let me out.
They took me to a class where two dozen girls stood around small portable stoves, all wearing dresses like mine. A timid old lady in a similar dress of a darker shade stood at the front of the room, demonstrating how to properly cook an omelet. Two men were leaning against the back wall. I didn't much like the look in their eyes.
They put me at the stove on the far side of the room, next to a girl who softly told me that her name was Erica. Her hair had grown back enough that I could see that she once had had gorgeous dark curls. She noticed me looking. "They shave it off twice a month," she murmured, quickly returning her eyes to her egg. "You get used to it."
"And what's with these stupid dresses?" I wondered out loud, but she shook her head silently in warning, eyes wide. A heavy blow landed on the back of my head.
"No talking," one of the men hissed, leaning in close. "Clear?" I stared at him silently with my chin up, ignoring the collar poking at my skull. He grabbed the top of my head in one large hand and wrenched it downwards, so that I was bowed over slightly and staring at his feet. "Better," he snarled, but his friend had wandered over.
"Look," he said with poorly disguised delight. "She's burnt her omelet." He gripped my wrist tightly and forced open my fingers, one by one, then stuck my hand into the shimmering air just above the stove and held it there.
"A young lady should never make a fist," he said mockingly as I squirmed. I didn't make a sound. By the time he let me go, my palm was blistered and bright red. The timid old lady gave me a new egg and a look of sympathy, and Erica didn't look up from her skillet again.
There were other classes, one after the other: how to clean, how to keep a household, how to socialize. There wasn't a class for how to please a man, but maybe that was just for the older girls.
By the end of the day I had a black eye and bruised ribs to add to my collection, along with the blistered palm and finger-shaped bruises on my wrist, and a sore neck from my repeated non-verbal warnings to keep my head down. That night one of the other girls in my room, who was called Eve, carefully bandaged my hand in neat white strips.
"They're training me to be a nurse," she explained. She had brilliant orange fuzz on her head and I wondered if the braid I'd seen on the barbershop floor had been hers. "They'll probably pick a career for you in a few days."
"I'm going to kill those sons of bitches," I fumed, as she neatly finished off the bandage.
"Everyone feels like that at first," said a girl named Maria, who had black hair and dull eyes. She looked like she had been here a long time. "You get used to it."
Hearing the echo of Erica's words from earlier, I set my mouth in a grim line. "I'm not going to get used to it," I declared, glaring at Maria. She shrugged and lay down with her back to me.
"Nine o'clock," a guard said, flicking off the lights. The only light in the room came from outside the tiny window. I'd gotten turned around since the drive, but I was pretty sure it faced towards home. As I watched, a meteorite streaked across the tiny patch of visible sky, but I didn't make a wish.
The next morning, a guard came and pulled me out of dish-washing class. With equal parts relief and trepidation, I was led down the hall and into the visiting room. My father stood as I entered. My mother remained seated, eyes fixed firmly on the table.
The visit was very short, and consisted solely of me being told that the reeducation camp was for my own good. "You'll never make your way in the world if you have no discipline," my father said, but cast a pained look at my black eye as he did so. "Promise me you won't try to draw attention to yourself anymore, Rach," he pleaded, taking my bandaged hand carefully in his own.
"Yeah, okay," I said, but didn't mean it. Then their time was up and I was led out of the room. My mother hadn't said a word the whole time, but when I glanced back over my shoulder, she cast me a look that said it all.
*
Title: the riverbank
Fandom: Animorphs/Greek mythology
Characters: Tobias/Rachel, Charon, the Keres, Thanatos, Hypnos, Persephone
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Animorphs, Tobias/Rachel, Eurydice/Orpheus style AE
"Birds aren't allowed in the Underworld," he tells you. You flutter your wings.
< I'm not a bird, > you say. The ferryman's brow is hidden in the shadows of his hood, but you think he's staring intently at you. Finally, he nods.
"The Styx will force you to take your true form," he warns. "You won't be able to change your shape across the river. There is no disguise in Death."
You say nothing, only open your talon and drop the coin into his waiting hand. You wonder what your true form even is anymore.
"It's been a long time since the living have been brave enough to cross into the world of the dead," he says, surprisingly talkative for a ghoulish ferryman of the dead. "I'm supposed to keep you out, but no one tries any more. At least maybe I'll get a good tale out of it." He makes you promise to tell him all about it when you come back this way. You say you're not sure you will.
You left your body behind on the shore. It fades out of view in the mist, a pathetic lump of feathers in the sand. You, your soul or spirit or whatever is left on the boat with Charon, flickers between forms. Feathers, fingers, beak, hair. Once you think you have hooves and a tail blade, only for a moment. But when the boat crunches against the far bank you find yourself human.
"Last stop," Charon says. He looks at you with concern. You are surprised to find that you like him. "Remember, child, the thing all the heroes of old had in common."
"Courage?" you guess. He doesn't answer, and you step out of the boat onto the gritty sand. "Thank you," you turn to say, but the words die on your tongue. The ferryman and his ferry are already gone.
So you walk. The Underworld stretches on forever before you, and you wish you had your wings, but as you walk and walk you realize that you don't get tired. First you pass Tartarus, a gaping black maw that seems to stretch across the whole of the world. As you walk around the edge, kicking up dust, all you can hear is the screaming. You are reminded of a pool of slugs and people in cages, and you cover your ears with your hands as you walk.
Next there is Phlegethon, stretching as far as you can see in either direction. This river is narrow, but the flames that run through it lick at the ceiling as though trying to reach the world above. Two women stand on the shore, watching you, teeth gnashing in anger. They are covered in blood, and one has long blonde hair. You know, somehow, that they are the Keres, spirits of violent death.
"Your beloved is ours," they hiss at you. "She fell in battle. She is ours."
You close your ears and walk past them. You are not theirs; they can't harm you. You close your eyes, too, and take a breath, step into the flames. The Phlegethon licks at your skin; the smell of burning flesh fills your nostrils, but you keep walking, and when you reach the other side you feel no pain. The Keres scream and rage behind you, but don't follow.
Next you meet two men, identical to a hair. One is dressed in black, the other in white. They fall into step on either side of you as you walk, and poppies bloom at their heels.
"You should not be here," says the one in black. His name is Thanatos, and he is Death. "You live yet."
"Peace, brother," says the one in white. His name is Hypnos, and he is Slumber. "This is my realm as much as yours, and he is but sleeping."
The River Lethe shines white and clear, and you pause on its banks. "I don't want to forget," you tell them.
"It's not about forgetting," says Thanatos.
"It's about remembering why you're here," says Hypnos.
So you step forward, and feel yourself washed away in the current, but you hold an image in your mind and when you reach the other bank, you keep walking, though you don't know why. It's all you've ever done.
You walk through the Meadows of Asphodel, and the shades whisper around you. They are nothing but shadows, faceless things that have never seen the sun, reaching for you with spindly fingers. The plains go on and on, but what you seek won't be here, among the ordinary.
You reach the banks of the Cocytus, the river of lamentation. It runs thick with sorrows, with the wails of no-longer-mothers and newly made orphans and halves of what were once wholes that have been left behind.
The Queen meets you there. Her skin is pale and untouched by sunlight, but her eyes dance with the life of spring. Her raven hair shines almost blue in the mist. "I heard your cries," she tells you, taking your hand in both of hers. You thought her skin would be colder. "You lament silently, but your heart cries out with it. Release your sorrows to the river, as an offering, and she will let you pass."
So you step into the water. It runs warm about your ankles, your waist, your throat. Cocytus closes over your head and you feel your grief, humming through your veins. You open your mouth and the river takes it from you, and when you step out on the other side you feel lighter, somehow.
Now you have reached Elysium, where the heroes stand, silent and bright as they stare at you. A girl steps from the crowd and cups your cheek in a shining palm.
"You shouldn't have come, Tobias," she tells you, scolding, but she smiles. She takes your hand, and you find your memories right where you left them.
"How could I not?" you say in return. She shakes her head, brushes cold bright fingers across your elbow.
"Where are your wings, red-tail?" she says. "You'll need them if you want to leave."
"Follow me," you say, and keep walking. You can hear the light brush of her footsteps behind you, but you don't look back. You know this story already.
You reach the River Acheron together and find the boat, and ride across in silence.
Years later, when you die and return to that place you never talk about, Charon asks you to tell him your story. He smiles at you and the woman you sit beside on the ferry. "Do you know now," he asks you when you are done, "what all the heroes of old had in common?"
You nod. You've had time to consider, now, and you think you know the answer. "All the heroes of old," you say slowly, "died unhappily."
The ferryman smiles. "You, child," he says, for you are still a child to him, "are no hero of old."
You take Rachel's hand, and step off the ferry together.
Characters: fem!Dean
Rating: PG
Prompt: 50 words: Supernatural, girl!Dean, The first time a gun lays in her hand, it’s the closest thing to religion she’ll ever know. The weight becomes her hymns, the bullets her bible and the silence it brings her only salvation.
Dee's guns are everything to her. Behind her family and her Baby, they're the only things that've always stuck with her. They've saved her life and they've saved other people's lives and man, do they get her laid.
But mostly, shooting one was the first time she'd made Dad proud.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Marco(/Rachel)
Spoilers: #54
Rating: PG
Prompt: Animorphs, Marco (/Rachel), he drinks a silent toast to her (post war)
You've got a baseball cap pulled low over your eyes and think if there were someone to talk to you might make a crack about cowboys and ask if you looked like John Wayne. The setting fits, too: some hole-in-the-wall place that's nothing but a grease spot on most maps and doesn't ask for ID. You could go to a nicer place and flash your card, sure; no barkeep's going to turn down this eighteen year old's order. But you're not looking for people to recognize you, to cheer and snap photos and ask for autographs, not today of all days.
Independence Day. That's what people have started calling it, a stupid joke about an alien movie that no one watches anymore, not since it started feeling like more than fiction. You think you probably started it, on some talk show or another. The day the Earth shook off its Yeerk oppressors and stomped them into the ground; that's how people will think of it. You consider the people who brought about the first Independence Day, way back when. You never paid enough attention in history class to remember much about them, but you wonder if they ever felt like this.
You study the bartop. It's got a layer of grime half an inch thick and would probably need about two buckets of cleaner and a steel wool pad before it would come even close to passing a health inspection. The glassware is passably clean, at least, though it could use a run through a dishwasher or two.
Behind you, a group of drunken rednecks begins loudly toasting the Animorphs or, more accurately, loudly cussing out the Yeerks. To these people the species is nothing but the Big Bad, Evil Incarnate, the Black in a history book of Black and White Morality. Winners write the history books, after all, but you guess that's why you don't feel like much of a winner.
You hunch your shoulders and tune them out, something you've always been good at. You haven't even touched your first glass yet, even though you've been here an hour, and the bartender is starting to look at you a little weird, but you've paid for your drink and if you want to stare at the greasy bartop through the lens of an undrunk beer then you damn well can.
You don't know what you're doing here, only that you didn't want to spend tonight alone in your too-big mansion, and you don't want to go out clubbing with people who don't give a shit. Your parents might understand, you think, but it's when you're not a kid anymore that you wish a hug from Mom or Dad could make the whole world right.
So you spend the night alone in this dump instead, only not alone, because there's always that ghost hovering over your shoulder, with her possibly mocking, probably reckless, definitely insane laugh. And that's what you're doing here, you think, as you raise your glass in a silent toast and drain it dry. You stand and throw down a tip, adjust your cap so you don't do something embarrassing like trip over a table or walk into a doorframe. As you head out into the night, you think maybe next you'll go see Jake.
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Rachel, others
Rating: PG-13 for language, sexism, abuse
Prompt: Animorphs canon AU fest: MM#3!verse, Rachel, a day in her life at the reeducation camp
They drove me to the camp in the back of a police car. It was a long drive, and I stretched out on the cracked vinyl backseat and closed my eyes. When I asked to use the bathroom, the driver slammed on the brakes in the middle of the freeway. His partner got out and came around to the back door, cuffed me over the head with a heavy hand. I blinked and briefly saw stars. "Get out," he said, grabbing me roughly by the shoulders. He dragged me over to the side of the road and forced me to squat down in the shoulder to do my business there, out in the open. He locked me inside the car again and then got in himself, turning around to glare at me through the bars. "Don't speak to me again, bitch," he said. I didn't, but I wanted to.
The fence was high and sturdy, but not topped with barbed wire like I expected. Then I saw the jagged voltage signs posted at regular intervals and realized why. The driver rolled down the window and the guard at the gate leaned in, looking at me like I was something dirty. "Another one, Bill?" he said, wrinkling his nose at me. "You know where to go."
The building was squat and gray and built like a prison. Bill and the foulmouthed one handed me off to a pair of uniformed guards at the door. A short man with a thin nose stood on the steps, arms folded, watching me.
"Careful," said Bill. "She's a fighter, this one." I had the bruises to prove it, too.
"Don't worry," said the short man with a faint sneer. "We'll soon fix that."
The first room they led me to held nothing but a line of chairs, and long locks of hair strewn across the floor like flower petals. I saw a few curls of defiantly dyed blue, and a pile of naturally vivid red still in its careful braid. They sat me down on the chair farthest from the door. It was hard plastic, and cold.
One of the guards pointed at the open black straps on the arms. "Are you going to cooperate?" he said, trying to look threatening. It worked, sort of. Pick your battles, I thought. I didn't say anything, but I held still as they sheered off my ponytail and left me with a head of prickly yellow stubble.
Then they took me to a smaller room and left me alone with a small bundle wrapped in brown paper. They told me to undress and shut the door. Regretfully, I shrugged off my favorite jean jacket and stepped out of the skirt daringly hemmed to just above my knees. Pants, of course, were out of the question. It was only when I was down to my underclothes that I noticed the little red light blinking from the security camera installed in the corner. Scowling, I reached up and hung my jacket over the lens. They'd had their show for the day.
Inside the paper wrapping was a full-length dress, blandly tan with a white blouse. The collar was stiff and higher in the back, so that it poked at the base of my skull when I held my head up. Fuming, I lowered my head and tucked in my chin. The dress draped loosely over me and felt like a burlap sack, and the shoes were a size too small and pinched when I walked. I left my old clothes where I'd dropped them and banged on the door till they let me out.
They took me to a class where two dozen girls stood around small portable stoves, all wearing dresses like mine. A timid old lady in a similar dress of a darker shade stood at the front of the room, demonstrating how to properly cook an omelet. Two men were leaning against the back wall. I didn't much like the look in their eyes.
They put me at the stove on the far side of the room, next to a girl who softly told me that her name was Erica. Her hair had grown back enough that I could see that she once had had gorgeous dark curls. She noticed me looking. "They shave it off twice a month," she murmured, quickly returning her eyes to her egg. "You get used to it."
"And what's with these stupid dresses?" I wondered out loud, but she shook her head silently in warning, eyes wide. A heavy blow landed on the back of my head.
"No talking," one of the men hissed, leaning in close. "Clear?" I stared at him silently with my chin up, ignoring the collar poking at my skull. He grabbed the top of my head in one large hand and wrenched it downwards, so that I was bowed over slightly and staring at his feet. "Better," he snarled, but his friend had wandered over.
"Look," he said with poorly disguised delight. "She's burnt her omelet." He gripped my wrist tightly and forced open my fingers, one by one, then stuck my hand into the shimmering air just above the stove and held it there.
"A young lady should never make a fist," he said mockingly as I squirmed. I didn't make a sound. By the time he let me go, my palm was blistered and bright red. The timid old lady gave me a new egg and a look of sympathy, and Erica didn't look up from her skillet again.
There were other classes, one after the other: how to clean, how to keep a household, how to socialize. There wasn't a class for how to please a man, but maybe that was just for the older girls.
By the end of the day I had a black eye and bruised ribs to add to my collection, along with the blistered palm and finger-shaped bruises on my wrist, and a sore neck from my repeated non-verbal warnings to keep my head down. That night one of the other girls in my room, who was called Eve, carefully bandaged my hand in neat white strips.
"They're training me to be a nurse," she explained. She had brilliant orange fuzz on her head and I wondered if the braid I'd seen on the barbershop floor had been hers. "They'll probably pick a career for you in a few days."
"I'm going to kill those sons of bitches," I fumed, as she neatly finished off the bandage.
"Everyone feels like that at first," said a girl named Maria, who had black hair and dull eyes. She looked like she had been here a long time. "You get used to it."
Hearing the echo of Erica's words from earlier, I set my mouth in a grim line. "I'm not going to get used to it," I declared, glaring at Maria. She shrugged and lay down with her back to me.
"Nine o'clock," a guard said, flicking off the lights. The only light in the room came from outside the tiny window. I'd gotten turned around since the drive, but I was pretty sure it faced towards home. As I watched, a meteorite streaked across the tiny patch of visible sky, but I didn't make a wish.
The next morning, a guard came and pulled me out of dish-washing class. With equal parts relief and trepidation, I was led down the hall and into the visiting room. My father stood as I entered. My mother remained seated, eyes fixed firmly on the table.
The visit was very short, and consisted solely of me being told that the reeducation camp was for my own good. "You'll never make your way in the world if you have no discipline," my father said, but cast a pained look at my black eye as he did so. "Promise me you won't try to draw attention to yourself anymore, Rach," he pleaded, taking my bandaged hand carefully in his own.
"Yeah, okay," I said, but didn't mean it. Then their time was up and I was led out of the room. My mother hadn't said a word the whole time, but when I glanced back over my shoulder, she cast me a look that said it all.
*
Title: the riverbank
Fandom: Animorphs/Greek mythology
Characters: Tobias/Rachel, Charon, the Keres, Thanatos, Hypnos, Persephone
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Animorphs, Tobias/Rachel, Eurydice/Orpheus style AE
"Birds aren't allowed in the Underworld," he tells you. You flutter your wings.
< I'm not a bird, > you say. The ferryman's brow is hidden in the shadows of his hood, but you think he's staring intently at you. Finally, he nods.
"The Styx will force you to take your true form," he warns. "You won't be able to change your shape across the river. There is no disguise in Death."
You say nothing, only open your talon and drop the coin into his waiting hand. You wonder what your true form even is anymore.
"It's been a long time since the living have been brave enough to cross into the world of the dead," he says, surprisingly talkative for a ghoulish ferryman of the dead. "I'm supposed to keep you out, but no one tries any more. At least maybe I'll get a good tale out of it." He makes you promise to tell him all about it when you come back this way. You say you're not sure you will.
You left your body behind on the shore. It fades out of view in the mist, a pathetic lump of feathers in the sand. You, your soul or spirit or whatever is left on the boat with Charon, flickers between forms. Feathers, fingers, beak, hair. Once you think you have hooves and a tail blade, only for a moment. But when the boat crunches against the far bank you find yourself human.
"Last stop," Charon says. He looks at you with concern. You are surprised to find that you like him. "Remember, child, the thing all the heroes of old had in common."
"Courage?" you guess. He doesn't answer, and you step out of the boat onto the gritty sand. "Thank you," you turn to say, but the words die on your tongue. The ferryman and his ferry are already gone.
So you walk. The Underworld stretches on forever before you, and you wish you had your wings, but as you walk and walk you realize that you don't get tired. First you pass Tartarus, a gaping black maw that seems to stretch across the whole of the world. As you walk around the edge, kicking up dust, all you can hear is the screaming. You are reminded of a pool of slugs and people in cages, and you cover your ears with your hands as you walk.
Next there is Phlegethon, stretching as far as you can see in either direction. This river is narrow, but the flames that run through it lick at the ceiling as though trying to reach the world above. Two women stand on the shore, watching you, teeth gnashing in anger. They are covered in blood, and one has long blonde hair. You know, somehow, that they are the Keres, spirits of violent death.
"Your beloved is ours," they hiss at you. "She fell in battle. She is ours."
You close your ears and walk past them. You are not theirs; they can't harm you. You close your eyes, too, and take a breath, step into the flames. The Phlegethon licks at your skin; the smell of burning flesh fills your nostrils, but you keep walking, and when you reach the other side you feel no pain. The Keres scream and rage behind you, but don't follow.
Next you meet two men, identical to a hair. One is dressed in black, the other in white. They fall into step on either side of you as you walk, and poppies bloom at their heels.
"You should not be here," says the one in black. His name is Thanatos, and he is Death. "You live yet."
"Peace, brother," says the one in white. His name is Hypnos, and he is Slumber. "This is my realm as much as yours, and he is but sleeping."
The River Lethe shines white and clear, and you pause on its banks. "I don't want to forget," you tell them.
"It's not about forgetting," says Thanatos.
"It's about remembering why you're here," says Hypnos.
So you step forward, and feel yourself washed away in the current, but you hold an image in your mind and when you reach the other bank, you keep walking, though you don't know why. It's all you've ever done.
You walk through the Meadows of Asphodel, and the shades whisper around you. They are nothing but shadows, faceless things that have never seen the sun, reaching for you with spindly fingers. The plains go on and on, but what you seek won't be here, among the ordinary.
You reach the banks of the Cocytus, the river of lamentation. It runs thick with sorrows, with the wails of no-longer-mothers and newly made orphans and halves of what were once wholes that have been left behind.
The Queen meets you there. Her skin is pale and untouched by sunlight, but her eyes dance with the life of spring. Her raven hair shines almost blue in the mist. "I heard your cries," she tells you, taking your hand in both of hers. You thought her skin would be colder. "You lament silently, but your heart cries out with it. Release your sorrows to the river, as an offering, and she will let you pass."
So you step into the water. It runs warm about your ankles, your waist, your throat. Cocytus closes over your head and you feel your grief, humming through your veins. You open your mouth and the river takes it from you, and when you step out on the other side you feel lighter, somehow.
Now you have reached Elysium, where the heroes stand, silent and bright as they stare at you. A girl steps from the crowd and cups your cheek in a shining palm.
"You shouldn't have come, Tobias," she tells you, scolding, but she smiles. She takes your hand, and you find your memories right where you left them.
"How could I not?" you say in return. She shakes her head, brushes cold bright fingers across your elbow.
"Where are your wings, red-tail?" she says. "You'll need them if you want to leave."
"Follow me," you say, and keep walking. You can hear the light brush of her footsteps behind you, but you don't look back. You know this story already.
You reach the River Acheron together and find the boat, and ride across in silence.
Years later, when you die and return to that place you never talk about, Charon asks you to tell him your story. He smiles at you and the woman you sit beside on the ferry. "Do you know now," he asks you when you are done, "what all the heroes of old had in common?"
You nod. You've had time to consider, now, and you think you know the answer. "All the heroes of old," you say slowly, "died unhappily."
The ferryman smiles. "You, child," he says, for you are still a child to him, "are no hero of old."
You take Rachel's hand, and step off the ferry together.