Atë (recklessate) wrote in nevermore_past, @ 2012-11-14 04:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | ate, saint george |
Who: George, Ate
When: 1858
Where: Savannah, Georgia
What: Hey, we were in that book together!
America was a strange place, George had decided. He'd only been there for a few months, but he was still far from used to it and was starting to think he never would be.
They served beer differently. They served everything differently. The slang was strange, especially in the South, and George occasionally felt like everyone around him was speaking an entirely different language. The accents didn't help. (He was seriously considering trying to lose his. There was only so much of people pointing out that he was English that he could be expected to stand.) There was still slavery in America, and it made George's stomach turn uncomfortably. For a place that was really very similar to Britain, America was still quite the culture shock.
And yet, it was still better than going back to Europe.
Anything would be better than Europe, George thought, taking an unnecessarily vicious sip of his beer. Because all Europe had offered him for centuries now was war. New weapons, new soldiers, new enemies and allies, but it was still the same old wars, fueled by squabbling monarchs hungry for resources and control. He honestly felt like he'd been doing nothing but fight and kill non-stop for hundreds of years. He was sick of it. Sick from it.
The entire Continent could burn.
He rubbed his forehead tiredly, trying to pull his thoughts away from the angry, frightened spiral he often found himself in. America was a little better, at least. There wasn't any war actively blazing, so his mind wasn't filled with other peoples' terror and bloodlust. But George still woke up drenched in sweat most nights, swinging at an enemy who wasn't there and shuddering at the sounds of gunfire or explosions. It took him too long to remember where he was, who he was.
He felt very, very tired.
George shook his head and took another sip of his drink, leaning back against the wall of the inn where he was staying. Stop brooding, he told himself. There was some kind of local festival going on, and it meant that most of the town was outside, the darkening night lit up with lanterns and torches. The night air was warm, and the atmosphere was festive. He felt like he needed to at least try to be happy.
America was a wondrous place, Ate had decided.
It certainly wasn't her beloved Greece but there were enough fools and arrogance here that Ate barely had time to even miss her homeland. America was the home of the brave and the free, as well as a true feast for the senses.
However, at the present moment she somewhat on the run from her fiance, a man in Washington who had known her only as his beloved young Nancy, the sweetest thing he'd ever met. Unfortunately for Ate her true nature had reared itself too early - a miscalculation - and she'd ended up on the end of something of a mob who thought her a witch.
A witch? The nerve!
But now Ate was in Georgia, with her pride wounded (as well as her body to some extent) and she felt at a loss for where to go next. The mob had rather put her off her game and she was working hard not to wallow. It was the first time she had ever come so close to dying at the hands of mere mortal men, and the goddess was shaken by her own weakness. She had thought, even here, that she was invincible. To be shown that she was not... it was disarming. Ate didn't like it at all.
So instead of seeking the revenge they so deserved, Ate was moving through the city of Savannah, sure that there was something that was going to smooth out her course, whatever it may be.
She entered the inn with a strange tickle at the back of her neck but Ate shrugged it off, taking it merely as a residual discomfort from those wretched men and their nearly successful attempt to hang her. One simply couldn't run in these binding crinoline dresses and corsets (even walking through doors on occasion proved a pain) and Ate blamed her capture on that. She missed the days when she traveled by walking upon the heads of man. Those were the good old days.
She had already walked to the bar when she felt the strange feeling once more and turned, eyes settling on one of the few others there and understanding. She'd come across very few like herself in this country but she was sure that this man was one.
She turned, fan resting delicately in her hands, and approached his table. "Good evening, sir," she said to him, curious and without malice.
George looked up at the young woman, head tilting slightly as he tried to place her features. He didn't recognize her, he realized after a moment. But he felt the strange, almost electrical sensation that signalled the presence of someone else like him. Probably not a Christian, since they tended to be much brighter and more noticeable in George's mind, but she wasn't attacking him. So far, so good.
"Evening, miss," George said, smiling. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"Perhaps," Ate said to him with a tilt of her head. Then she smiled, small and guarded. "But I think it unlikely."
She gestured to the seat across from him. "May I join you?"
"Please do," George said, smile growing a little wider. "I'm never one to turn down company."
Once she was seated, he put his drink aside and sat up a little straighter. "My name's George. Pleased to meet you."
George. A very normal modern human sort of a name. It was no help to her at all. A slightly frown of confusion (of almost frustration) and she asked, "Is that your true name, George? If we're sharing only what we allow those around to call us then you may know me as Nancy."
George couldn't help but laugh. Her words weren't particularly blunt, but the idea behind them was clear: stop playing around.
"Well, 'Nancy', as a matter of fact, that is my name," George said, extending his hand to shake. "Saint George, at your service."
After a moment's thought, he added, "Also, if that should for some reason make you want to kill or otherwise attack me, let's try that outside. These folks have a lovely inn, I'd hate to ruin it."
Ate extended her own hand to touch his, still a little wary of this. (Ate was not supposed to be the wary one. Ate was supposed to be the one who made others wary!)
"I see no reason why I should choose to want to attack you," Ate said honestly, already feeling that he wasn't her usual sort of mark even if he had been a human. (She liked them arrogant, on the knife point of darkness.) "You're no one familiar to me after all. I am Ate."
George shook her hand, something in his mind catching at her name. Ate. He'd heard it before. It wasn't any huge, bright red flag telling him that he needed to be afraid, which was good, since his reaction these days to being startled was not ideal for keeping a low profile. It was more like trying to remember someone he'd met at a party several years ago.
It clicked as he sat back, releasing her hand. The Fairie Queene. It had been a long time since he'd read it, but now he was sure of it. She hadn't made an appearance in his portion of the story, but she'd been there nonetheless. She'd been some cohort of Duessa's.
He felt the old, instinctive panic and anger start to rise, jaw clenching and heart beating faster, and then...nothing. The old fear had been dulled, apparently. Blunted by time and far worse things. It was actually a bit nice, in a way. At least he wasn't going to have to worry about Duessa popping up in his nightmares.
"You're Ruin," George said aloud, voice still friendly. "I think we have met, actually. Or at least know the same people."
Ate raised an eyebrow slowly, taking a look around the two of them to check that they were still alone. There was no one who was listening in, so she turned her attention back to the Saint at the table. "I am she," Ate agreed a little cautiously. "You're of the Christians, dear boy, what cause have you to know of me, a Greek? I have no memory of meeting any of your kind before."
At least... not really. Although she couldn't shake that something here seemed familiar.
"Well, it didn't exactly..." George sighed, pushing a strand of his too-long hair behind his ear. He'd never really been sure how to classify the things that had happened in stories and fairy tales. Rationally, he knew that most of it could never have happened. Kingdoms ruled by a fairy queen, castles ruled by Pride, forests that shifted as though the trees themselves were alive, none of it happened in the normal world. But he remembered it all like it had been real.
As if he needed anymore reason to question his sanity.
"There was a book," George explained. "Well, technically a poem, I suppose. Anyway, it was called The Faerie Queene. You made an appearance in it. They said you were a demon, which obviously isn't the case, but they still called you Ate. I was in it as well. They called me Redcrosse."
The goddess tilted her head, memories that weren't truly hers - but that somehow fitted - coming to the forefront. Yes, fairies and demons and knights that silly Christian hellfire. "Redcrosse," she repeated as though remembering the name from a very long time ago. She watched him with interest. "Yes, I remember this."
But it had never happened, had it? Ate had never been to England, had never been a demon of the Christians, had never summoned a fellow from their Hell to torment this knight. And yet... somehow it had happened, had involved her. Ate felt as though her head was collapsing a little. "Except," Ate said after a few moments, "my memories of it... they're not true. I've never actually..." she shook her head with a frown, raising her fingers to press them against her temple as though to fight off the oncoming headache.
"None of it could have happened, but you remember it anyway?" George smiled a little. "It's the same for me. It makes my head spin when I think about it for too long. I can't say I usually enjoy the feeling, even if not all of the memories are bad."
He reached over and took another sip of his drink, surprised to feel his frayed nerves calming down a little. There was something to be said for seeing old, familiar faces, even if they'd once been his enemy.
Ate watched George with curiosity for a long moment and then finally said, "how odd." The way they were all constructed, built of nothing at all but the breath of the mortals they walked among. Ate liked to think that she was stronger than that, better than that, but in the end she was just like the rest. She was flesh and bone because they willed it, because they whispered her name to their children. (And with each generation that whisper came less. And one day they would speak her name no more.)
"I suppose," she said, "that makes us enemies or a sort." She didn't sound very interested in the idea at all. If anything, Ate simply sounded tired. "But while I might usually delight in the idea of playing the role of evil temptress, I've had a simply wretched week and still have the rope burns on my neck to show for it. So if you've interest in having some fiction-based battle, I'm afraid you'll have to begin it, Redcrosse."
"Did someone attack you?" George asked, expression going serious. He was unable to summon even a little hostility towards her, and so his instincts to protect anyone who might need help flared instead. Which was ridiculous, and he was well-aware of it; Ate doubtlessly could take care of herself quite well.
But she seemed tired and unhappy, and George empathized with that more than he was comfortable admitting. "What happened?"
Ate laughed, finding it somewhat amusing that this saint (whom she had sort of terrorized, technically) was concerned about her welfare. "Angry mobs are terribly difficult to reason with," Ate told a little more soberly. "And, alas, I lack many of the skills I once had to disarm them."
And by 'disarm' Ate was pretty sure she meant 'tear them into tiny pieces and feed them to each other'.
"That's an unfortunate quality of mobs," George said, taking a sip of his beer. "That and their tendency towards killing things."
Considering who she was, there was a good chance that whatever she'd done might have warranted an angry mob. But George couldn't even work up the energy to feel hostile, let alone judgmental. And angry mobs were damned annoying.
"Oh, I'm perfectly fine," Ate said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Out of house and home and in an unfamiliar city and state, but I suppose that's to be expected."
Ate leaned across the table, resting her elbow on table and chin on palm. "But I'm sure if Saint George had been there he'd have been quite pleased to see me hang." She battled her eyelashes. "I may only bring people to the foolish endings they deserve, but I have my suspicions you might frown upon that."
"Well, that's a tricky question," George said, settling back into his chair. "Because I can't say I like leading people to their doom, which is generally what you do, correct? But I've also never liked mobs." He shrugged.
"I'm glad they didn't hang you, though," he added. "It isn't a fun way to go."
"I am what I am," Ate answered with a shrug and a small smile, using that as her only answer to his question. "But I'm glad to see we agree on mobs. They're terribly unreasonable."
She touched her hair lightly, checking it was all still pinned it place and acceptable, and then looked at him with curiosity. "So I take it you've been hung before?"
"Once or twice," George said, rubbing his throat at the memory. The first time, he'd been lucky and it had been quick. The second time, not so much. "I didn't care for it. The line between saint and heretic isn't very clear to some people, unfortunately. How close did they come to catching you?"
Ate carefully drew down her high collar and tilted her neck back, just enough to show the red rope burn there for a moment before replacing the collar. "Closer than I would have liked," she told him with an tight, unimpressed smile. "This is an unhappy land for Gods."
George leaned in to stare at the rope burns, whistling softly. She was lucky to be alive; in his experience, once a mob had a rope around their unfortunate target's neck, there generally wasn't much of a chance at getting away.
"Most people here tend to prefer the supernatural to come in small doses, in a form they understand, and not be hostile in any way. That doesn't describe most gods, unfortunately. They aren't coming after you, are they?"
He really needed to stop trying to help every person he came across who was in the slightest bit of trouble.
"I doubt it," Ate said, although she looked behind herself anyway, just checking. "I think I made enough of an impression to keep them away." She'd managed to snap her fiance's neck with her feet as they'd pulled her up into the tree and from there, in the panic, she'd managed to escape. She should have stayed and done more damage but she was spooked.
"And what's your story, sweetness?" Ate asked with a raised eyebrow. "What finds a Saint drinking alone when all the streets outside are alight?"
"I'm fresh off the boat from London," George said. Technically, he'd been in America for almost half a year. But considering that he still woke up every morning thinking he was in England, it was obvious that he hadn't quite made it his home. "I'm still trying to understand the accents and the strange, terrible things they do to their food. And-"
George glanced towards the door of the inn, able to hear the laughter and happy chattering from all the people passing by. He shuddered; dealing with large amounts of people felt like an enormous effort lately, something that would leave him completely drained. He much preferred it inside.
"-I'm not exactly in a celebratory mood," he finished.
Another tilt of her head as she watched him with interest. He was a strange one. Perhaps it was because he was still new, or maybe it was just Ate's own unusual mood making her feel that way. Whatever it was, Ate felt somehow allied with him for a moment, the both of them strangers in a stupid land.
"Lonely?" she finally queried. "Or simply lost?"
"Both," George said tiredly. He probably shouldn't have been talking to her about this, really. But anyone who spent any amount of time with him could see that he seemed exhausted, no matter how much he'd managed to sleep the night before. Complete strangers had mentioned to him that he looked too tired. He wasn't telling her anything she couldn't work out for herself.
"I suppose I could look up the rest of my pantheon, see if any of them are staying nearby, but..." he shrugged. "Sometimes the people who know you well are the ones you least want to see."
"I know that feeling," Ate said with a slight curl of her lip. There were family she wouldn't have minded being around, but the idea of them seeing her like this, this weak pathetic thing, horrified her. She was Ruin. She used to travel the world upon the heads of men so fast that her bastard sisters could never catch her, and now a mob of angry humans could take her down.
She sighed quietly. "I share your weariness, Redcrosse. I feel displaced here. In Greece I had a purpose. My hand brought doom upon thoughtless and reckless actions, but here... I'm just a shadow. I'm not long the deserved punishment."