InsaneJournal

 The sky was angry, but its inhabitants not so much. Instead, everywhere Anteros turned, he saw smiling faces, hedonistic pleasure and delight in their very existence. It had never bothered him before - it wasn't supposed to, it wasn't his place - but for once the sheer presence of joyful gods and goddesses, brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins the world over -- they got under his skin and they burned with envy.

So Anteros came down to Earth, where humans weren't nearly as exhilarated by their daily lives and where couples still broke apart, for this or that reason. There was some purity in that - in love with a deadline - not like among 'his' kind. Nothing true up there, oh no. Nothing worth giving your life for. He shot an arrow into the night sky and watched it fall, dead and lifeless into the sea where its lead tip could rot away. 

Phobos actually preferred to spend most of his time on the mortal plane. This was where he really thrived; amongst the riot of humanity. He barely had to stir the pot to incite his brand of terror, humans already had a great many things to fear. The gods and goddesses, not so much. So, to Hades with them, Phobos was perfectly dandy down here, playing with the diseased.

Perched in a haphazard lounge on a tree branch, limbs drooping, it was something of a surprise when Phobos noticed Anteros close by. Out near the seashore. The twisted relic of his spine ushered him to sit up a little straighter. Blood wrought fingers in the bark like claws, leaving their mark before he dropped to the ground. Shoulders in a high, casual display as he prowled up, first behind and then alongside the dear brother. Rancid tongue punched into the hollow of his cavernous cheek. Silent for a moment before he canted his head toward Anteros with peaked brows.

"Are you trying to kill the ocean or the sky?" As that shiny arrow had pierced both before sinking away.

Phobos came like the tide, certain and sure and treacherous, waves of fear between the pauses in his words. They instilled an odd kind of vindication in Anteros even as he reminded himself to reject their sway. Phobos was their father's son and a product of the cruelty that lineage represented, but sometimes - just sometimes - Anteros felt he could almost see where that made them brothers.

"Neither," he retorted and imagined the taste of fear in his mouth. A shake of the head. "Both." Would it be easier to just come out and say it? Give his hatred a name? It was what mortals did - sometimes wih help from another realm.

With one fist clenched, Anteros turned from the sea and stared deep into chaotic irises. "We have a sister." A new one. Unnatural. 

The jolt of curiosity bent Phobos' mouth into an odd angle. On anyone else, it would have been named as a smile. But on him, it was a fierce gnashing of gleaming teeth. Anteros was a strange creature -- it was like equal drops of their mother and father had composed him. Phobos was quite certain that he had nothing of Aphrodite in himself, but Anteros was like a median between the two worlds; love and hate.

When Anteros spoke up, the words were a confusing set. It pinched Phobos' eyelids into the slits of a viper. "A sister?" He was unfamiliar with this news, or why it should cause his brother such distress.

There was no nod, no acquiescence, merely a pinching of the cheeks inward as his mouth drew tight and made speech uncomfortable. It was a brief physical manifestation of something he'd only recently allowed himself to ponder. Something that had been made reality despite his bitter opposition.

"She brought on our mother's envy and now she is our sister by Eros' side. Funny old world." Not funny ha-ha, not like there was anything worth laughing about here. She was unworthy and Anteros pressed nails into his palm at the thought. She was unworthy. 

Abysmal eyes, the cold blue of a drowning victim, were fixated and steady while Anteros recanted the story. A silent step guided him closer, a chronic tilt of his head. Teeth clicked while Phobos considered the disapproval coursing over his brother.

"I don't understand, who did this?" Phobos knew that at the base of every strong emotion, there was a seed of fear somewhere. Even love, as Phobos understood it, was just the fear of being alone. It's what frequently made his methods of manipulation so easy.

Anteros bit back on his fury and turned it to sour, bitter laughter. The kind of pathetic behavior mortals entertained and immortals mocked. He shuddered at the thought of his brother and that 'thing' mocking him now. "Who do you think, brother? Zeus."

It was their grandmother's anger, alive in all of them, but dormant, for she had poured her venom well and turned them rotten from the first. Through Ares, by Aphordite, into Eros, Anteros. Even Phobos. 

Lips folded into a tight line at the mention of that name. Of course, Zeus. Teeth bit into the corner of his sallow cheek as he shook his head. Heaving an exhale while executing a shrewd stare toward the other god. A solemn look that easily said they should not be surprised.

"Such a soft spot for the mortals, he's now making them part of the family?" Phobos had to admit that it was perturbing.

"I suppose the next step is to cast us down to live amongst humans, hmm?" A light joke that cut in on the heels of worry. Irony twinkled somewhere in the sky.

Anteros wouldn't have gone as far as his brother suggested, but the possibility was there, born out of precedent and their grandfather's unspeakable determination to please his favorites at the expense of everyone else. Oh, it could happen. Anteros embraced the fear-mongering assumption tightly to his chest. Finally, a target for his anger.

"I wouldn't stand for that. No one would. It's one thing to make gods of mortals, and even that's more than they deserve, but this? It would be war." 

Once the statement was planted, there was no turning back. The words had actually slipped out on their own, but Phobos silently praised the genius behind them. The potential truth was heavy, because Phobos looked so certain. Skepticism and paranoia wormed through every syllable that was cleaved from his lips.

"Come now, brother. We are not his precious Athena. You cannot tell me that you truly believe he has the slightest investment in our well being. As unrequited love, his chronic affairs mock not just our grandmother, but your very existence."

Anteros felt his blood boil at the thought because it was truth, plain and simple and derrived from the lips of one who used it to sow fear and distrust.

"Must you remind me?" he snapped through clenched teeth. "We're far from being the apple of his eye, but we are not his to dispose of." And Psyche was not his to crown.

"Aren't we?" The words came out in a laugh, because it was so true. "Is he not our king? Did we not seep out from his own divinity?" An arm, lanky and lecherous, swept across his brother's shoulder. An embrace of solidarity and protection.

"Considering Zeus' ego, I would not be surprised if he considered such an act as his sole right. To divide, destroy, or create us as he sees fit." Finally, a bit of sorrow sank into the words, and Phobos' arm fell away. Useless.

"I do not enjoy seeing this truth, when so many of the other's are blind to it, brother. I can only hope that you see the creation of this new sister for what it really shows of our dear Zeus."

Anteros stiffened at the cold embrace, unwilling to let himself be comforted when what he wanted was to break and tear and hurt for what he felt had been done to him. But once released, he felt no relief. Only a certain kind of fear that he attributed to his brother's touch.

"We seeped out from his divinity and his from Titans. Go back far enough and his divinity is no more rightful or deserved than our own." Anteros broke free of him and stopped at the edge of the surf, Poseidon's domain all but opening its arms to him. "I hadn't thought of it as his fault so much as our brother's. He asked. He summoned her to Olympus. Perhaps that's petty of me. Perhaps you're right about the bigger picture."

"Why should Zeus have indulged him? Would he have done the same for me, if it were I and not Eros that had brought her in?" The idea of Phobos in love was probably laughable. The more that Phobos talked this through, the more he believed it himself.

Shucking away from his brooding brother, Phobos resigned himself to retreat. Chewing on the calloused edge of a gore encrusted thumb -- those hands were all too frequently stained from murder and mayhem. "I don't suppose it much matters to dwell on these things." Turning his head for a farewell grin aimed at his sibling's back.

"After all, who are we to question Zeus?"

Anteros didn't turn to watch him go. There would be no point. But thinking on what he'd been told, he couldn't help but feel his disproof brimming just below the surfact of his skin. They were but children, true, but they were the children of immortals. The spawn of heaven. When years meant nothing and infants sprung fully formed from the sea and the stone and foreheads of old men -- what mattered was not age of experience but power and they all had that. Phobos with his split tongue no doubt knew that well.

Aware of temptation wagging its tail as though to beckon him near, Anteros wavered on the edge of the water, the edge of the night. He could let it subermge him, this feeling taking seed inside his chest, he could drown in it, or he could attempt to swim against what was fast becoming a rising current. It was no surprise to find the latter option vastly more appealing.

He stepped forth into the waves, disappearing under the foam of the sea.