He glared, glared for that comment, for a moment, and he wasn't sure why he hadn't expected this....but perhaps it was because his thoughts were currently a continuous stream of panic and mad escape plots, fear and already the first strains of bitter, bitter guilt.
Glare narrowed back when her eyes did, he snorted something that could have been a sigh or a small note of disgust or self-degrading amusement. "Actually..." he said softly. "There is no preparation. It changes. It always changes." And he knew that her solution to this would be the same as everyone elses'; lock him away. Lock him away where no one could be hurt by him.
Labyrinths. He had spent all of his immortal life within one, his home and his prison, and like most life-long prisoners, there was always a part of him that craved that darkness, that complete maze of twisting, turning confusion that only he and the architect understood. But he had been free for ...years uncountable. He had been able to taste the morning and watch the sunsets, to look at the stars and drink the morning dew. He hadn't tasted freedom, he had sucked it in with gusto, gotten drunk on it, turned it and made it work for him. He could have stayed a monster all of the time, the man hiding in the shadows until he couldn't be found at all....instead he fought. He fought and fought until he was granted access to the world. Access was not enough. He created names, reputations, identities. He made friends, lovers, had adventures, found happiness and profound sorrow, he had lived so many lifetimes outside of those halls...
And Asterion wasn't about to go back.
And so he stood and glared at her even though he had little strength left, and had she attacked, he would have called upon what was there, buried deep in the coils of his tired, ruined limbs, and he would have fought valiantly.
The truth was that Asterion, as a man, as an identity...was not a lie. He was not the carefully crafted fabrication that Sato imagined him to be. Asterion the man was the oldest of the three identities that lurked inside of his form, he was the truest nature because he was that which had been born into this world. He was also the weakest, and the four of so millenniums that had passed since his birth had taught him about loss, about sorrow, about danger and self preservation.
But the monster was stronger, always had been, and as far as the artist understood, that's all that existed. He wasn't aware of a consciousness so crafty that it could control them both, one that could see through his eyes and also the monster's, the seam that their separation had created. Asterion thought that Orpheus had been faced with the beast, he had no idea, no clue, not even an inkling or whose...or what's arms the musician had found himself in.
He willed his legs not to tremble under the weight of his fear and grief, and he stared at her a moment longer. Should he tell her the identity of his friend? Tell him what dream she had yanked him from so coldly? He weighed his options and knew, knew that he was treading on her territory, knew that he was too weak to defend himself if she did attack, and so he sighed grudgingly and nodded toward the area where a door once stood.
"Icarus," he said, softly, reluctantly. "I was trying to tell Icarus to find me. I've not damaged anything in your name. I've been....only here, in this garden, and there. In his dreams."