Broken Mirrors (Zelos, Nike, Kratos)
Here on the banks of his river was peace, for a time. Just for a moment to make sense of all that had happened. They had not listened. Thanatos. Phlegethon. And the rest. None of them had listened, none of them had really heard what he tried to say. In their minds what was he? A brutal, cruel being? Perhaps he was. A fool? That, certainly. And what else was he? Too late he'd seen the truth of his own family. And he'd managed it by polluting his own thoughts, insisting that he was saving them. From oppression that none of them really thought existed. How did you rescue someone from something which they did not believe existed? Did that mean that the threat was not real, or that they couldn't see it? Akheron looked for the answers in a thousand white poplar trees and more. Having only just a moment to do that. Only this brief span of time before he was given whatever weak pain his nephews and nieces could summon. Fear was not in it. His mind recoiled from the idea of testing his strength against theirs, and seeing who would emerge victorious. For a thousand years and more he'd practiced the sword below. They would be hard pressed together or alone to match such a thing, but he couldn't contemplate the outcome to such a confrontation.
He'd given Styx his word.
Many times over.
It wasn't pain he feared. Blood and broken flesh held no fear for him. What he really feared was that he'd been wrong all along. In more ways than one. If his motives were not pure, was it not right that they judged him for those motives? Bark slid beneath his fingers, reacted to his presence with a sudden ferocity that was all in his mind. Pity. Pitying himself would not help him. There was a fine line between self-examination and pity. If he could find the truth it was to be desired, but descending into the depths of misery - and all of it centered around his perceived weaknesses - was not. How did he tell the two apart? All the lessons his father had given him, and this was not one. He could act for the love of his family. He could endure pain beyond the reaches of any god to inflict. And yet he couldn't tell why he was doing it, why it was so damned important. Avenging his son was... no longer possible. Perhaps, had never been possible at all. Trapped as he was forever, because of the traits that Akheron had drilled into him. Honesty. Forthrightness. There was a specter Akheron had been fighting all along, and it was himself, his own guilt. The one thing he'd never faced. The fact that he could not save his son, had not even planned to do that when he'd struck out on this mission to bring down Olympus.
Why? Because it couldn't be done?
Or because it was ... something else? Akheron loosened his tie as he walked, as his feet placed gentle slow marks in the earth which surrounded his river. His own pain. His own hate. Those were the things that fueled this entire enterprise. He was no better than Phlegethon. Acting in the supposed best interests of his family and meanwhile doing it only for himself. No. Better in one way. His family had been merciful on him, had shown him the error of his ways. Erebos and Nyx together had done this. Saved his life when he hadn't wanted it saved. Brought him back to himself, in a manner of speaking, and broken the cycle that had led him to this place. This he'd accepted because it was what his family required of him. Was it enough? Was it ever enough? They were his parents, not the keepers of his soul. Change, true change, depended on him. He didn't know how to change. Soft winds raced between the trees, lazy and gentle in a sport that was more joy than competition. Against his face as he cast his tie onto the ground. Into the mud. It felt like change, didn't it? It felt like rebirth in a way. If there was a future there was always the promise that things could be different tomorrow. Or the next day. But he hated them both, hated their hubris, and for what they'd done to his son he could never forgive them. Akheron wished he knew what the future would bring, how he was to change.
Wished he knew, so he could work toward it.
There were no answers in the ghosts of a thousand uncrossed souls that littered his banks, walking among the trees. Bitter blue spirits whose time on Earth had been short and their Fate since then cruel beyond belief. They had eyes to see and mouths to speak. Ears to hear. Yet they were unaware of their master as he moved among them, drew on their pain. Fed on it. He had changed himself once by taking in the pain and hardening himself with it. He had felt it but had not understood it, or its purpose, and that had led him here. Master of pain and yet he'd fooled himself with it. So taking in pain once more, but not this time to harden but to shatter whatever was left of the old order. Akheron couldn't believe in new beginnings, in a wholly changed being. But if he had not been honest, even though deceit was not his intent, didn't he deserve to be shattered for drawing them into a fight they hadn't wanted? There had been a lie. Akheron had not been aware of it, but that didn't make it true. And now he was to give his comeuppance for the lie and remain in the same place as every other creature who didn't after all know his way. Those thoughts came heavy as he shrugged out of his coat, left it in the mud behind him. Only that pressed white shirt, dark slacks and shoes remained. The mud was ending at last.
Soft ground, but firm.
This would do.
And further down the bank, much further, he imagined he could see the place where Ascalaphus had been buried beneath the boulder. It was not to be - that place was far, out of sight, a distant memory. No desire, then or now, to see the place where his son lay trapped. The boulder itself or the crater it had left behind. Akheron stared at those hard knuckles resting upon either first in turn. He should have wept. Would have wept, once. Pain was something he had both embraced and rejected. Now, even if he only embraced it, he couldn't tell if it really was self-examination or pity. The difference, at the moment, hardly mattered. They were coming to wreak their vengeance, and there was no part of him - old, present or new - which disagreed with their sentiment. They were as hard a set of gods as he had ever known. And today they would make him realize it, in one way or another. There were ways which went beyond the physical. The emotional or the spiritual. Yet one thing stood clear in his mind. His life would not end. It would go on, and as he'd noted a life that continued had always hope walking in step with it. What did he hope for her? What did he think about when he lay on the cold stone and imagined a different life for himself, something other than the thing he'd chosen?
Her.
Styx.
Only her.
She consumed every part of his being, and had thrown as much - if not more - into this examination as Erebos or Nyx had. She was what he thought about now beneath the cool shade of the largest white poplar in his collection. Harder ground now as the river receded without his conscious direction. She was all he wanted, all he hoped for, all he prayed for. Should a god pray to himself or to another? What did he pray for? Styx would never forgive him for what he'd done. Styx would forever be in his debt for what he'd done. How odd that he could see both sides of her so clearly now when he hadn't, all those years. Akheron sat down against the tree to wait. Not a hard god to find, certainly, for blood that was of his blood. Pain washed over him as the spirits made their doleful passage. How delighted would they be, even for a moment, to see him suffer as they suffered daily? Was he in the habit now of giving gifts?