Pale fingers reached for his smile and trailed through the wet red of it. Styx flicked her wrist afterward and sent droplets neatly flying into nothingness. She wiped her hand on his sleeve before setting it in the center of his chest. It felt as if the bones under her hand were ready to shift at any second. There was an unbalanced feel to him, one she couldn't properly name, and it was more than what Kratos had done to him. The words he'd said kept floating back to her, and although - had he known - it wasn't what she imagined he wanted her to dwell on, dwell she did. 'You're willing to let me waste away.'
When had she ever controlled that? When had her presence with him meant he would be whole? The question flipped back on her in the snap after she asked herself it: always. Always since Persephone...since his son.... for a long time. He needed her. That need, it had turned to love, hadn't it? And why not? Why not love that creature who kept you strong? Kept you from fading? He needed her again - had never stopped - and her eyes grew heavy with color when she realized the truth of it.
This was why he had come to her instead of to his river. This was why. Because if he didn't have her, there would be nothing recognizable of himself left to start over, nothing left to rebuild once his plans had come to ruin. Nothing but the shell of what he was, and her, inside him. All of this, all of it, the words, the desperation in his laughter, the immediate appearance of him - all of it. He might love her. She was sure he did. But he needed her more.
Styx pulled her hand away from his chest, carefully, carefully, as if the breaking of contact would break the responsibility she had to her brother. She hadn't started him on this path; he had reached for her. And he had many choices in the beginning. But she was somewhat responsible for what he had become, just as she was somewhat responsible for what had happened to Moros. Pulling herself up on her knees, she punched her fists into the tops of her thighs and leaned over him. When the Bia-blued stripes of her black hair slid over his cheeks and his shoulders, when they were too close for him to miss every intense speck in her eyes, she finally answered.
"You will have me, then, Potamos Akheron, as much as I will give. But if you turn out like him, I will throw you into my river and drown you, but you will not die. If you turn out to be like him, there will be no end to the horrors I visit on you, and you will have deserved every one of them."