WHO Marcella, Ares WHEN Tuesday afternoon WHERE the hospital WHAT Ares considers his options WARNINGS none
Ares didn’t like hospitals much. They smelled funny, and there was too much emotion. Not the good kind of emotion that lead to battle either, just crying and shit like that. He made his way through the hallways, trying to avoid touching anyone, to the room Aphrodite had told him he would find his daughter in.
He’d told her never to darken his door again. He’d told her to stay away, and it really had been for her own safety. The men who followed him were dark and dangerous. Marcella thought herself able to rise to the challenge, but she was too soft really. She’d grown up coddled by her mortal mother. Or so he’d thought, until he’d been told about Apollo.
Imagine Apollo being bested by a mortal, and a female one at that! What a fool, to underestimate the blood of Ares. Clearly she had something to strengthen that birdlike frame, some bloodlust to drive her to gut Apollo onto the carpet. Ares felt something he rarely felt towards women, but she had earned a small amount of respect from him.
He shifted into the room, and looked around. Marcella looked small in the bed, attached to various monitors, an oxygen tube under her nose. Her chest, covered with a hospital gown and protruding wires, rose and fell shallowly as she slept. There was a woman in the chair next to her bed, who half rose as he entered, her face going white and then red.
“Ares,” she breathed. The god narrowed his eyes at her.
“Celeste,” he said after a moment of trying to dredge up her name from his past. He watched her, and she looked back at him, utterly disconcerted.
Yes, Dite had mentioned that the child’s mortal family had come. Ares looked her up and down, and shrugged slightly. She had aged well enough, but that spitfire passion that had drawn them together 24 years ago had mellowed with time. His gaze went back to Marcella, and he took a few steps forward.
“Please,” Celeste said, “she’s dying. She’s your daughter. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“No.” Ares kept his eyes on Marcella. “I am a bringer of pain, not a reliever of it. She has acquitted herself admirably of this life. Fighting to the end is not a shameful way to go.”
A moment of quiet past, broken only by the soft beep of the machine, and then the woman started to gently weep. Ares sighed. All this crying.
The girl’s eyes were open, and she was looking at him.
“Father.” Her voice was whispery. Ares watched her a moment, and then bowed his head slightly to her.
“Daughter.”
Maybe one day he’d see her on the Elysium Fields. Until then, he had paid his respects. He stood a moment longer, and then nodded to Celeste, glanced back once more at Marcella, and left the room. He couldn’t get out of this festering pit fast enough.
“Oh, excuse us,” said a cheery nurse as he stepped into the elevator. She pushed a wheelchair, in which sat a hunched over man. Ares stared straight ahead as the elevator went down, until his eyes met the eyes of the man in the wheelchair through the reflection of the door.
Murphy. Ares kept eye contact, and the man made a distressed sound, his hands twitching spasmodically. The nurse bent over him to try to calm him, but by the time the doors opened and Ares strode out, he was still making sounds of fear. Ares smirked and left this place of sickness and failure behind him.
Besides. His half-brother had declared himself a war, and Ares never backed down from a fight.