WHO: Melpomene and Alan WHEN: Saturday 17th WHERE: Alan's place WHAT: Me and Leah literally have no idea what's going to happen here WARNINGS: TBA, probably nothing more than references to all the things she's been through
She’d scrubbed the bloodstains off the carpet one last time, and each wringing out of the cloth into the bucket cemented the determination in her heart; there had to be a better way. Blood came out of the carpet but the real stain was not something that could be washed away. The old ways weren’t going to help her anymore. The old ways only dug her deeper.
Melpomene didn’t have a plan yet about what to do with her apartment. Store everything. Have it cleaned. Move somewhere else. She just knew she had to leave.
On the marble kitchen bench she left a note to be found by whichever sister with a key came calling next: Telos and I have gone to get some space. She drew a little sketch of herself and Telos in the corner, so they’d know she wasn’t in a rush, running from some danger. She had the time to write more, the long lines of her stylized self said, but not the words.
Of course whoever read it would tell Apollo, too, but Melpomene was a little more afraid of him telling her sisters what she’d done. Whenever she thought about it her blood ran cold. Gooseflesh rose on her arms. The feeling of the knife going into his eye -
She wasn’t taking a single knife with her. Not a one. Just as many of Telos’ things as she could carry down to her car, some of her clothes, and her notebook, and her computer. She hadn’t written anything since Telos was born but now?
Fates, she had no idea what she was doing now.
Wash all the blood from her carpet, wash all the blood from her hair, then tuck Telos into his baby pod and go, trying to fight the awful memories that came with that pod. She hadn’t been in a car with him since that long drive home with Ares. When it came time to visit the doctors (it was Calliope who’d reminded her some of his vaccinations were due) she’d walked. She’d barely gone anywhere else at all in months. Her skin was the palest it had been in years.
That night, she drove out of Manhattan, and up into the Bronx. She knew fewer people there, had fewer connections anyone else could follow. Fewer connections, but not none… she passed the Western Funeral Home on her drive and looked out over the quiet building, remembering Qebhet’s kindness for a moment with a deep ache in her chest, before she set her sights forward and drove on. The hotel that took her in was modest, a lot smaller than her apartment but surrounded by sounds of other people, footsteps and voices long into the night. She didn’t mind it; her apartment was so soundproofed, she kind of missed the sounds of humanity.
And Telos settled to sleep in a new place with surprising ease, and again she had to wonder what effect his travels had on him. There were things about her son she’d never know, and though this was a truth every parent had to realise at some point, it cut particularly hard to realise it so young.
One he was asleep, Melpomene removed all the knives from the drawers. With hands that shook like her palm was still sliced open, she wrapped them up in a pillowcase, and stuffed them deep into the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Even the butter knives. The thought of curling her hand around the hilt of any of them made her sick with dread of all the things she’d done. Tragos’ legs. Apollo’s eye.
But both of them had betrayed her, unspeakably. She hadn't attacked them unprovoked, but...
But to cut Tragos' legs as she had, and then to call Ares down on him. To take a knife to Musagetes...
Was she villain, or was she victim? Perhaps Qebhet had been right, that day, months ago. Two truths can stand together. Maybe she was both.
She lay herself down to sleep with a restless heart, terrified, haunted, guilty, angry, and broken by the events of the last few hours on top of the last few months. Beneath her window, people spilled out of the hotel bar and onto the street, singing and laughing as they went, and Melpomene curled tighter around her aching chest, one arm out and clinging tightly to the edge of Telos' portacot.
In the morning, her heart was as heavy and haunted and guilty and angry and terrified and broken as before, but when she messaged Alan the next day, he didn’t turn her away. His reply made her weep as she was walking Telos back and forth across the floor. She fought back sobs because he was resting against her chest and she didn’t want to jerk him around, but the tears kept coming, and coming, till long after he was asleep.
She’d lied to Apollo, last night, when she’d told him the only true good she’d felt this year was for Telos. As she packed her things in the hotel, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Alan, too, had been a source of real good. Alan had loved her more purely than anyone had loved her in a long time.
If she was searching for purification, she had to start there.
If nothing else, she needed to tell him he’d been right.
If nothing else.
She wanted his hand to brush her forehead. She wanted his soft voice to say her name and make it right.
But as she pressed her finger into his doorbell, she told herself not to want such things. Melpomene, above all else, understood the concept of too late.