| Fantasy || LIES (Tag: Akheron) |
[03 Mar 2008|11:51pm] |
The touch on her sick grey-blue cheek sent a half-second jolt through the paleness tugging her down. Phlegethon had disappeared with Aphrodite in tow, and there was nothing more she could do for Akheron to shield him from Olympus. That was what she had been trying to do. Didn't he see that? The censoring he laid over her, it was fucking ridiculous. If he ever knew her, he knew she wouldn't lie silent while Aphrodite hovered unnaturally on the chains Akheron installed to hold her.
"I'm not one to yield quietly," she said to him, preferring to leave her voice dead in her throat. "You..."
And all her awareness snapped away from her corpus, jerked hard from Akheron, from his home, from his power and his safety, and she was hovering instead before Morpheus... and Hades... and Makaria. Morpheus... Morpheus?! "I, Morpheus, King of Dreams and chief among the Oneiroi, swear by my father, Hypnos, Lord of Sleep, and by my mother, the goddess Pasithea, and by my head and by my heart, that I will protect Persephone and Makaria against any threat visited against them. I swear to protect them completely, to defend them even if the cost should be my life. I do this of my own will, and in Waking Life. I swear to act always with their best interests in mind, and not to aid anyone that might strive to harm either of them or their household." The fool! The utter, blind, stupid fool! There were no caveats, no conditions, nothing, nothing, nothing to save Morpheus from a grim and terrible life going forward. She did not hate her nephew. Of her brother Sleep's children, Morpheus was the finest - truly the king of dreams. But as she collected his completely impossible oath to herself for safekeeping, as the water of her river dissolved into black mist that rose in deathly vapors from the wood floor, she could not help but believe that she was sealing his fate. The breaking of this oath could only be inevitable. There was no true way Morpheus could honor this. If he ever acted out of ignorance... if he ever was given less than the full picture... The only way Morpheus could manage this oath was if he bound himself not only to the service of Hades, but to the Dark Lord's side in all things. In every thing.
She came back to herself, and how she found herself again sitting against the wall, she wasn't certain. Had Akheron touched her? She looked up at him, drying blood and spit collecting roughly in the corners of her lips. Sickness filled her, in more than just body. What did it mean? Makaria... Hades. A marriage of souls? She remembered how Phobos had knit himself to her - and how she had done the same - without the aid of Hera or her less binding oaths. The Styx was the true measure of dedication, of loyalty, within the gods of Greece. And so, regardless of the why, Styx now knew something she hadn't before.
The appraising look Hades had been giving her nephew. She knew that look, a guarded acceptance, a guarded approval... and the desire for power. Domination. Claiming. Hades was her Dark Lord, and she served him as often as she served Zeus - but ever willingly. There was an oath to Zeus, one of the first ever sworn on her own river, but as for Hades.... It had always ever been her choice. Now Morpheus was denied that. Denied it, evermore. Hades had claimed Morpheus for his own. Against even their family. Sickness. Sickness. Her hand shoved against her mouth. But as the back of her hand paled her skin, she saw something else that she hadn't seen before. Deep within the words she'd just taken into her own river for safekeeping, she heard the reticence. This had not been Morpheus' true choice. This had not been what Morpheus desired to do. Coercion.
The answering fury lit her green eyes with fierce anger. She reached blindly, groped, and under her fingers unfurled dark fabric that she crumpled into her palms. Under it, the strange coldness where warmth would be if it had been Phobos. "He has him," she said, her voice half-river, half-dying corpus.
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