Half-remembered conversations flit through her mind, interrupted by sharp spikes of panic as disorienting reality sinks in.
She is lost and confused, laying in a bed she does not know and too exhausted (physically. mentally. emotionally. aetherially) to do a single thing about it.
She is angry. Anguished. They are all dead. Lost. Torn apart and ripped to pieces.
She could not save them. She should be with them now.
Why is she here? She should not be here. She wants to be with them.
She deserves to be with them, doesn't she?
( She deserves to suffer )
She could find new purpose...
( She doesn't want to )
She's tired
tired of the fighting
the screams
the death
the deities.
she could let it all go. she could make it all just...
He wakes out of his dreams more slowly than he might have otherwise, the oddity of them lingering more than they might have otherwise - it's rare enough that he dreams of any of his fallen friends, much less more than once in short order. But odd though they are, they're naught more than that: dreams. Fleeting drifts of memory and thought that he can no more stop than he can set aside his eternal duty.
Instead, he yawns, stretches, opens his aetherial sight to the world... and freezes, mid-stretch.
A soul is screaming in pain.
A familiar soul is screaming in pain.
He doesn't stop to think. There's no time to. Nor any time for his usual dramatics. He simply reaches out along the trails of aether, following the path of that soul he knows so well until he knows where she is... and between one moment and the next he goes from his cabin to standing at her side.
"Is it truly that unbearable, here?"
For all that he was - and still is - standing very nearly on the edge of panic, his voice is light. Or as much as he can make it, anyway. At this distance, the great cracks running through her soul are all the easier to spot, and he has no idea what she might be feeling, besides.
The sudden, unexpected interruption shatters Hemera's focus long before her soul has the chance, leaving her to collapse in a heap on the bed she awoke in like a puppet whose strings have been cut, shivering uncontrollably from the lingering pain; faint, dizzy, and barely conscious. There is a keening, barely audible whine emanating from her throat as she struggles to locate him with how her head swims.
"Oh..." An exhausted, shaky breath that quickly grows wet with emotion. Relief. "It worked...?"
There's a brief moment of silence, at both the way she all but collapses in a heap on the bed and the comment she offers, and then he gently settles down next to her. He knows only one thing that would be capable of causing cracks in her soul like he sees before him, and even as far removed from that singular moment of catastrophe as he is, it's still not a comforting memory.
"Would it be easier that way?"
Even he can't fix the cracks in her soul. Can't put return her to the way she had been. But he can do something to make it easier to bear, and almost without thinking about it, he lets his aether gently wash over her, soothing away as much of her pain as he can manage.
She hums a soft note in answer, allowing her eyes to drift shut as she feels the bed dip beneath his weight. He seems so small compared to her, and in reflex she shrinks herself to a comparable size. In the end she becomes smaller than she originally intended, as the more she shrunk the more her pain would fade, though there is only so far she can comfortably compress herself.
"...You are all dead. What point would there have been?"
The gentle touch of her dearest friend's aether eases her pain further, and for the first time in far too long Hemera finds herself feeling soothed. She exhales, letting out a long, deep sigh.
"It's so quiet... No more screams... Is this what peace is, Hades?"
He is smaller than she no doubt remembers him being, it's true. A side effect of having to take mortal vessels - and of the nature of the inhabitants of the shards, in the wake of the Sundering. Not that he couldn't claim his full height. Stand tall as a very literal giant among men. But it benefits his various schemes far better to be taken as little more than simply another mortal. Another person, in whom one might take counsel.
(And if said counsel should, from time to time, lead to ruin, it has always been his intent for it to do so. The seeds of chaos do rather need a helping hand now and again.)
"Close enough, perhaps."
Not the peace she might have been trying to find - the same peace that he can't deny having occasionally longed for himself - but peace nonetheless. A quietness, free from the screaming of a world being all but torn into pieces and her people along with it.
"Here more so than most places."
There is, after all, not even the faint murmurings of the lifestream, here among the stars. (As for the comment about them being dead, he chooses not to address it, for the time being. Though not all of them perished in the Sundering that is likely to be a conversation best had when she's a little more awake.)
"But you must be tired. Rest awhile; I shall remain here till you wake again."
It isn't until her friend suggests she rest that Hemera realizes she really is tired. Exhausted right down to her core, mind drifting in a haze of it. The thought of sleeping is not appealing to her, largely because she isn't entirely certain she isn't already asleep and experiencing a pleasant dream.
There's a brief moment's silence at that, and then a soft sigh. He can't blame her, not when there's no denying that the sight - and sound - of the world being rent asunder had been something that he dearly wished he could forget. But even so, it's clear that she does need the rest and while he's not about to force the point (she'd never forgive him, he thinks, were he to simply cast a sleep spell on her) he doubts her exhaustion is helping much.
"Would it make a difference to know that I have survived?"
And indeed, should she be aware enough to note it, his soul bears the truth of his words - it is whole (and also notably not screaming in pain).
"I..." The question should be simple to answer, but it isn't. "If you live outside of dreams, it would."
Because it would mean he had to live with the same agonizing failure as she does. That he was isolated and alone, no longer surrounded by a city filled with his people.
That his survival was her fault.
"Even if you loathe me I could not leave you to suffer such loneliness."
He can't, even after their falling out. She was not the one to cause the Sundering. Not the one to have caused the Sound that had been the source of their woes and though she had abandoned her seat and the Convocation - had abandoned him - he's had centuries and more to come to terms with the fact that she'd been almost certainly doing what she'd thought best.
(Though neither can he deny that it had hurt, either.)
"The role of Azem has always been to represent the desires of our people as a whole... What point was there in keeping a seat that meant nothing in the end?"
Her breath catches; sharp and sudden as the flash of pain that lances through her. She shudders, curling herself up even smaller, as though it will keep her soul from falling apart entirely.
Just as he does not blame her for leaving, she cannot blame him for loathing her.
"I had no choice, Hades. I could not fulfill my duty to my people."
He had. He does. But that hadn't stopped him from resenting her. From resenting being left alone, bereft of anyone he might have called a friend. Still, he notices the way the she shudders, pulling in on herself - an action that could easily be an aftereffect of her injuries, though he has a suspicion it's more than simply that.
"And yet you still let it happen," she says quietly; accusing. "Our people were divided long before we were Sundered... Tell me, was He worth it? That twisted creation that has gorged itself upon the souls of our brethren?"
It's evident enough that she doubts his claims of this being no dream. She's had dreams of reuniting with him countless times before—this is nothing new. To dream of companionship, and then wake up all alone.
There's little he can do prove the truth of his words; that this is no dream. Not beyond simply remaining. Beyond making that when she does wake (whenever sleep should claim her) that she does not do so alone. Still, there's a moment's silence before he answers, and that alone might nearly be damning enough.
"I cannot answer that without bias. We are-- ah, no, that terminology came later, I believe."
There's a brief pause then, as he regathers his thoughts and tries again.
"Do you recall how our aether - our souls - became ... marked, after we summoned Zodiark? We were all of us bound to His will, in that moment. To His desires, and those that brought Him forth. And not even the ultimate fate of our world could undo that mark."
It does not surprise her—not after what Hyth had told her—but it does disappoint her. She curls in upon herself more securely, shying away from her companion's touch.
"The sound of half the souls of our star being consumed by that thing took years to drown from my mind. Then you did it again." She shivers. "Licking at the heels of a monster, it is no wonder you didn't answer when—"
When I needed you most.
"...At least you had your fellow thralls until the end."
"If that should be what you choose to think of me..."
There's a shrug with the words, and he cannot deny it hurts, to know that she thinks so little of him. To imagine that she might believe bias alone - even that granted by his tempering - would make him incapable of caring. But he knows too that words alone will not be enough to prove otherwise. That her belief in who he is - who he has always been - will need to be something he earns. Something born of action, and not mere words.
(Still, it will give him something to do, he supposes. Something to work on, though it might take time.)
"But we are tempered, not so altered as be unrecognizable. Halmarut's speeches - while well-meaning - still tend to run overlong. And I would rather suffer the unending droning of insects than spend another moment of eternity forced to endure Fandaniel's utterly inane prattle."
She flares with anger brought upon by grief and betrayal, and it hurts enough to steal her breath. One fisted hand unfurls itself, sliding down to press firmly against her abdomen while the other remains steadfast against her sternum. There is the hiss of air between her clenched teeth, and no doubting the resentment in her tone.
He knows he shouldn't ask. That the answer will likely be no more comfortable than the ones she has already given. But the question is already past his lips before he can stop it. And perhaps it's just as well. If she would blame him no matter what he should choose to call himself, surely it's better to know sooner rather than later?
"Or would you blame me for what I have not done - could not do - regardless?"
"If Hades cares, it is not for me." A quiet sound rises in her throat, angry and anguished in equal measure. Slowly, it rises in volume until she's all but yelling:
"What you did was ensure I was forever alone! Has your precious master been worth all the sacrifices?!"
She takes a gasping breath, fingers digging into the flesh of her chest until the flare of pain eases.
"Tell me, Hades," Hemera demands in a dangerous whisper. "If He had demanded it, would you have sacrificed my child to sate His monstrous hunger?"
He flinches, just a little, at her first comment. He'd known it would hurt, had known that there had been all but no chance it wouldn't - had been expecting it to hurt - and it still does. It's harder, too, to think of setting it aside, when it is something that has been so directly pointed, from one of the people he'd cared for most. But he has lived with sorrow for thousands upon thousands of years. He can manage a little longer, or so he imagines.
...And then she mentions a child, and any thoughts but that promptly flee his mind, leaving him blinking as he processes the news. Enough so that he does - for a moment - wonder if there is still a child. (Now that he's actually looking he can see the physical signs pregnancy has left on her body; small changes that he had all but written off as his memory being faulty after so long.) Logic kicks back in then - if there had been he would have seen it from the first. Thus, it is a matter of there having been a child. A potential that was never realized, and there's some part of him that might almost mourn that, deep under the tempering.
"Have I fallen so far in your graces that you assume I would even want to?"
There's hurt in his voice - how can there not be, at such an accusation - but there's echoes of loss, too. Of sorrow, both for what could have been and what was. He might not have had the chance to know Hemera's child - neither of them have - but he knows all too well the pain of losing a child. Even if his had managed to exist, for a time.
The hurt she can hear-sense-taste in his voice catches her by surprise, as does the fact she spoke of a child at all. To her it had never been more than a possibility. A promise made to her by the star only to be broken. Her breath catches, damp with emotion she hasn't confronted in decades.
"...I suppose it doesn't matter," she says, ignoring the wetness in her eyes. "Zodiark or no, I could never have done it all my own. There was never going to be a child."
It might have been no more than a possibility, perhaps. But that it had - for that one brief moment - been a possibility is enough to dig at wounds he had thought very nearly closed. Memories that he would have been otherwise perfectly content to let lie, to remain as simply that. Memories, of something that might have been. Fragments, echoes of what she has, with that single suggestion, spoken into the world. There may not have been a child. But there could have been. Without Zodiark. Without the Final Days. Without the decisions that had been made and not made.
It takes a moment, before he finds the right words. Before he finds it in himself to speak at all, when he knows that there are too many 'what if's to speak of the possibility of there having been one, had they not had cause to summon Zodiark.
"Emotions rarely care for if a thing should matter, I've found. The hurt is real. The possibility was real, if but for that brief moment."
The hope was real, though he can't say for certain if she'd allowed herself to do so the way he had, when she'd realized what could have been. Nor does he mean to ask. Some things are better left unsaid, and this, he suspects, is one of them.
"I was too ill." For a time she had thought it from grief, but then it worsened. "It was killing me."
There was so much pain. So much blood—
Hemera curls into herself further with a quiet, agonized gasp. Her soul shudders along with her, guttering like a candle flame before eventually steadying again. (She wishes it didn't.)
Her voice falters, turning into no more than a broken whisper.
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in-person reunion (CW: trauma; suicidal behaviour)
Date: 2020-11-29 01:16 am (UTC)Half-remembered conversations flit through her mind, interrupted by sharp spikes of panic as disorienting reality sinks in.
She is lost and confused, laying in a bed she does not know and too exhausted (physically. mentally. emotionally. aetherially) to do a single thing about it.
She is angry. Anguished. They are all dead. Lost. Torn apart and ripped to pieces.
She could not save them. She should be with them now.
Why is she here? She should not be here. She wants to be with them.
She deserves to be with them, doesn't she?
( She deserves to suffer )
She could find new purpose...
( She doesn't want to )
She's tired
tired of the fighting
the screams
the death
the deities.
she could let it all go. she could make it all just...
s t o p .
.
.
.
it would be so easy.
( the cracks are so deep )
it would not take much at all...
just a little
( dig her fingers in and )
p u l l
.
.
.
her soul screams
( she screams )
no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 05:53 am (UTC)Instead, he yawns, stretches, opens his aetherial sight to the world... and freezes, mid-stretch.
A soul is screaming in pain.
A familiar soul is screaming in pain.
He doesn't stop to think. There's no time to. Nor any time for his usual dramatics. He simply reaches out along the trails of aether, following the path of that soul he knows so well until he knows where she is... and between one moment and the next he goes from his cabin to standing at her side.
"Is it truly that unbearable, here?"
For all that he was - and still is - standing very nearly on the edge of panic, his voice is light. Or as much as he can make it, anyway. At this distance, the great cracks running through her soul are all the easier to spot, and he has no idea what she might be feeling, besides.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 06:11 am (UTC)"Oh..." An exhausted, shaky breath that quickly grows wet with emotion. Relief. "It worked...?"
no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 06:32 am (UTC)"Would it be easier that way?"
Even he can't fix the cracks in her soul. Can't put return her to the way she had been. But he can do something to make it easier to bear, and almost without thinking about it, he lets his aether gently wash over her, soothing away as much of her pain as he can manage.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-29 07:01 am (UTC)"...You are all dead. What point would there have been?"
The gentle touch of her dearest friend's aether eases her pain further, and for the first time in far too long Hemera finds herself feeling soothed. She exhales, letting out a long, deep sigh.
"It's so quiet... No more screams... Is this what peace is, Hades?"
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 06:30 am (UTC)(And if said counsel should, from time to time, lead to ruin, it has always been his intent for it to do so. The seeds of chaos do rather need a helping hand now and again.)
"Close enough, perhaps."
Not the peace she might have been trying to find - the same peace that he can't deny having occasionally longed for himself - but peace nonetheless. A quietness, free from the screaming of a world being all but torn into pieces and her people along with it.
"Here more so than most places."
There is, after all, not even the faint murmurings of the lifestream, here among the stars. (As for the comment about them being dead, he chooses not to address it, for the time being. Though not all of them perished in the Sundering that is likely to be a conversation best had when she's a little more awake.)
"But you must be tired. Rest awhile; I shall remain here till you wake again."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 06:43 am (UTC)"...But I've no wish to wake again."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 05:15 am (UTC)"Would it make a difference to know that I have survived?"
And indeed, should she be aware enough to note it, his soul bears the truth of his words - it is whole (and also notably not screaming in pain).
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 05:24 am (UTC)Because it would mean he had to live with the same agonizing failure as she does. That he was isolated and alone, no longer surrounded by a city filled with his people.
That his survival was her fault.
"Even if you loathe me I could not leave you to suffer such loneliness."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 06:13 am (UTC)He can't, even after their falling out. She was not the one to cause the Sundering. Not the one to have caused the Sound that had been the source of their woes and though she had abandoned her seat and the Convocation - had abandoned him - he's had centuries and more to come to terms with the fact that she'd been almost certainly doing what she'd thought best.
(Though neither can he deny that it had hurt, either.)
"But I do, yes."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 09:13 pm (UTC)Her breath catches; sharp and sudden as the flash of pain that lances through her. She shudders, curling herself up even smaller, as though it will keep her soul from falling apart entirely.
Just as he does not blame her for leaving, she cannot blame him for loathing her.
"I had no choice, Hades. I could not fulfill my duty to my people."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 04:44 am (UTC)He had. He does. But that hadn't stopped him from resenting her. From resenting being left alone, bereft of anyone he might have called a friend. Still, he notices the way the she shudders, pulling in on herself - an action that could easily be an aftereffect of her injuries, though he has a suspicion it's more than simply that.
"And I meant only that I live. This is no dream."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 05:01 am (UTC)It's evident enough that she doubts his claims of this being no dream. She's had dreams of reuniting with him countless times before—this is nothing new. To dream of companionship, and then wake up all alone.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 06:03 am (UTC)"I cannot answer that without bias. We are-- ah, no, that terminology came later, I believe."
There's a brief pause then, as he regathers his thoughts and tries again.
"Do you recall how our aether - our souls - became ... marked, after we summoned Zodiark? We were all of us bound to His will, in that moment. To His desires, and those that brought Him forth. And not even the ultimate fate of our world could undo that mark."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 06:18 am (UTC)It does not surprise her—not after what Hyth had told her—but it does disappoint her. She curls in upon herself more securely, shying away from her companion's touch.
"The sound of half the souls of our star being consumed by that thing took years to drown from my mind. Then you did it again." She shivers. "Licking at the heels of a monster, it is no wonder you didn't answer when—"
When I needed you most.
"...At least you had your fellow thralls until the end."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 09:05 pm (UTC)There's a shrug with the words, and he cannot deny it hurts, to know that she thinks so little of him. To imagine that she might believe bias alone - even that granted by his tempering - would make him incapable of caring. But he knows too that words alone will not be enough to prove otherwise. That her belief in who he is - who he has always been - will need to be something he earns. Something born of action, and not mere words.
(Still, it will give him something to do, he supposes. Something to work on, though it might take time.)
"But we are tempered, not so altered as be unrecognizable. Halmarut's speeches - while well-meaning - still tend to run overlong. And I would rather suffer the unending droning of insects than spend another moment of eternity forced to endure Fandaniel's utterly inane prattle."
He means that too, by the annoyance in his voice.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 11:19 pm (UTC)She flares with anger brought upon by grief and betrayal, and it hurts enough to steal her breath. One fisted hand unfurls itself, sliding down to press firmly against her abdomen while the other remains steadfast against her sternum. There is the hiss of air between her clenched teeth, and no doubting the resentment in her tone.
"It should have been you."
no subject
Date: 2020-12-16 05:55 am (UTC)He knows he shouldn't ask. That the answer will likely be no more comfortable than the ones she has already given. But the question is already past his lips before he can stop it. And perhaps it's just as well. If she would blame him no matter what he should choose to call himself, surely it's better to know sooner rather than later?
"Or would you blame me for what I have not done - could not do - regardless?"
no subject
Date: 2020-12-16 06:24 am (UTC)"What you did was ensure I was forever alone! Has your precious master been worth all the sacrifices?!"
She takes a gasping breath, fingers digging into the flesh of her chest until the flare of pain eases.
"Tell me, Hades," Hemera demands in a dangerous whisper. "If He had demanded it, would you have sacrificed my child to sate His monstrous hunger?"
no subject
Date: 2020-12-29 06:00 am (UTC)...And then she mentions a child, and any thoughts but that promptly flee his mind, leaving him blinking as he processes the news. Enough so that he does - for a moment - wonder if there is still a child. (Now that he's actually looking he can see the physical signs pregnancy has left on her body; small changes that he had all but written off as his memory being faulty after so long.) Logic kicks back in then - if there had been he would have seen it from the first. Thus, it is a matter of there having been a child. A potential that was never realized, and there's some part of him that might almost mourn that, deep under the tempering.
"Have I fallen so far in your graces that you assume I would even want to?"
There's hurt in his voice - how can there not be, at such an accusation - but there's echoes of loss, too. Of sorrow, both for what could have been and what was. He might not have had the chance to know Hemera's child - neither of them have - but he knows all too well the pain of losing a child. Even if his had managed to exist, for a time.
"Of course I wouldn’t have.”
no subject
Date: 2020-12-29 06:24 am (UTC)"...I suppose it doesn't matter," she says, ignoring the wetness in her eyes. "Zodiark or no, I could never have done it all my own. There was never going to be a child."
no subject
Date: 2021-01-12 06:19 am (UTC)It takes a moment, before he finds the right words. Before he finds it in himself to speak at all, when he knows that there are too many 'what if's to speak of the possibility of there having been one, had they not had cause to summon Zodiark.
"Emotions rarely care for if a thing should matter, I've found. The hurt is real. The possibility was real, if but for that brief moment."
The hope was real, though he can't say for certain if she'd allowed herself to do so the way he had, when she'd realized what could have been. Nor does he mean to ask. Some things are better left unsaid, and this, he suspects, is one of them.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-13 03:55 am (UTC)There was so much pain. So much blood—
Hemera curls into herself further with a quiet, agonized gasp. Her soul shudders along with her, guttering like a candle flame before eventually steadying again. (She wishes it didn't.)
Her voice falters, turning into no more than a broken whisper.
"...It would have been our masterwork. A family."