Reunion
Demigod AU. Reed Scuro. Alexa Myers.
Oh look, picking at scabs!
Happy belated birthday, Reed.
Alexa knew the weight of being watched, even if she had lost years of memory in the Lethe. Her skin prickled under the familiar gaze, her fingers twitching almost imperceptibly to feel the thin wire of her hidden weapon. Her eyes stayed closed, knowing that if she opened them, the room around her would be empty and dark.
Outside her home, she could hear the waves lapping at the beach, calm and steady, no hint of rough winds or tumultuous waters. The storm instead was trapped inside the demigod visitor.
Is this real?
She almost winced at the memories that rose unbidden, his recollections and her trauma. She saw her own face, gaunt and pale, and contorted with agony. Pain lanced through her arm – always a relentless ache, but under his gaze, it roared, infecting her mind like the black veins that had poisoned her body.
Something crawled over her, creeping through the sheets with excited curiosity as they tested her solidity, ascertaining that she wasn’t a figment of their master’s nightmares before he could stop them. They flooded over her, gentle and –
A flash of pain at her hip, the dark tendril dragging cruelly through her flesh as she was held aloft, thousands of tiny pinpricks – needles, sharp and cold – digging into her skin.
She rolled, throwing the blankets off of her to shield herself from view as she landed on the other side of the bed. The wire thickened in her grasp, the spear shaft taut and balanced as it swung out into the empty space that greeted her.
Her heart raced, the feeling that this was a familiar game between them doing nothing to ease her anxiety. Her eyes darted to the darkness across the bed, searching the corners for where he could be hiding.
She didn’t have to wait long.
Shadows melted around the tall boy – man now, most of the youthful softness gone from his face and the angles of his joints no longer awkward with every motion – as his wide, stony gaze studied her unhindered. His lips parted in disbelief for a fraction of a second before they shifted into a triumphant smirk.
I found you.
She’d read enough of Kiara’s letters to know that whatever had happened to him since she’d left, it hadn’t been easy. She could see it in the gray tinge to his skin, the dark bags underneath his eyes, but he looked at her as if she was a lifeline he’d clung to for so long.
“You’ll be a prisoner. What if you wanted to leave? How would you get away? The gods don’t give gifts. You know this. You know this! Why are you acting like a fool?!” He howled, desperate and paranoid, a wounded animal lashing out to protect itself.
The demigod who stood before him was not what he expected. No tortured prisoner caged at the gods’ mercy, no broken shell fractured beyond recognition. If he could look past the scars – the ones etched into her flesh and the ones carved into her mind – he could almost see the person she’d been before the quest, the one who dealt in secrets as easily as he did and knew the threat of the gods’ attention.
She could feel her name on the tip of his tongue, could tell his mouth struggle to not form the familiar shape of the syllables. He didn’t though, not out of respect for her wishes, but because it was an unknown variable and he didn’t like those.
But his caution burrowed inside her like barbed wire, tearing into the muscles of her memory and the weight of what she’d fled.
“You’re not the Scuro I expected,” she informed him, a bite to her words that sent a pleased thrill through him. Her grip on her spear tightened, the skin of her knuckles white with the strength of it.
Reed quashed the satisfaction quickly, snuffing out the flicker of hope that she could be who she had once been. It was dangerous and weak.
The shadows, satisfied that she wasn’t a hallucination, pulled back, swirling around him like a familiar cape. They purred with glee, happily exploring the space as the clouds shifted over the moon and the soft light danced across the room.
“I’m the better option, trust me,” he answered smoothly. He glanced at her spear pointedly, though he knew better to ask her to lower it. “You might have impaled Kiara before she even realized you had that.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Her chest tightened at the thought of the blonde’s embrace, suffocating and unyielding as she refused to surrender. Her breath caught in her throat, stuck behind a sob that she choked down.
Reed tensed, backing away slightly with upraised palms, as he put the pieces of the puzzle together. She wasn’t healed completely, still as tormented as him, but masking it in a different way.
She had to keep calm, before the flood of her emotions and Reed’s alerted Lindsay too soon. She didn’t know who she was protecting – herself, the goddess or the intruder – but the idea of Reed and the deity meeting seemed like it would only end badly.
“There isn’t much she wouldn’t do for him, and he knows it. He uses it to get what he needs.” Realization. Understanding. Watching from an outside perspective and knowing the immortal wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t entirely right either.
Scuros were dangerous. They were stubborn, determined and protective – but the memories she had pieced together over the past years of them and the girl she used to be told her they weren’t deliberately hurtful to her.
She was just caught in the crosshairs.
The spear shifted in her grip, transforming into the thin cord that Alexa wrapped around her hand so it would be ready in an instant. Reed watched with his usual intensity, noting her measured movements and the way her breathing became more regulated as she focused on the rhythmic inhales and exhales Lindsay had coaxed into becoming routine.
“Why are you here, Reed?” she asked with a pointed stare.
He lowered his hands, shoving them into his pockets. “I just wanted to check up on a friend.”
The nonchalance made a bitter chuckle bubble in her throat, remembering moments of half lies and unspoken truths as they danced around each other. She settled on her bed, inhaling scents of the jasmine flowers and sand that permeated the island air.
“I don’t remember everything, Reed, but even the girl who returned would know that everything you do has layers.” The words made him stiffen, his gaze sharper than it had been a moment ago at the reminder that she knew him. “So why else?”
He started to pace, his brain buzzing as he determined what to say and what would give too much away. For all that he had spent years searching for her, it felt like he had never truly let himself hope that he’d find her. Now, he was almost as adrift as the island was.
“I thought I would rescue you,” he admitted, settling on an option that was somewhat truthful. He was still stupefied by her, that she wasn’t a –
A caged bird.
She flinched at the comparison, recoiling, and his immediate reaction was to draw closer, searching for an unseen wound that was scarred into his memory.
“Don’t,” she warned, holding up her uninjured hand to keep him away. She couldn’t handle somebody touching her right now, pained not by the Underworld’s poison.
Instead, she was lost in the feeling of a body around hers, murmuring warm words into her ear as she stared vacantly into space. Her body spasmed, remembering the way electricity arced through her nerves.
Breathe.
“Shit,” Reed cursed, raking his hand through his hair as his mind raced. Part of him wanted to hold her, to steady her like he had so many times on the mountainside, but it warred with the instinct to protect himself, to hide and regroup.
Lindsay was becoming aware, shaken by the flurry of emotions. Alexa forced herself to concentrate, to push aside the wave of fear and anxiety so she could focus on the calm.
“Hide,” she gasped.
His eyes widened at the creak of floor boards and he disappeared into the shadows as the goddess threw open the door, hurrying to Alexa’s side.
~*~
She didn’t sleep.
It had taken hours to convince Lindsay – not that she was fine, that would have been impossible – but that nothing was wrong. That it had just been one of her many panic attacks and she didn’t need to be scrutinized.
The goddess knew better, but it said something about the fact that she knew Alexa wanted distance for now. That she could drill into her later and get the truth, but right now would only be met with resistance.
So the hours had passed without sign of Reed, the demigod wisely putting space between himself and the island now that he knew where to find her.
Alexa sat on her bed and waited.
Tonight, the waves were relentless, crashing against the surf as the wind whipped through the trees and the cracks of the house. The lanterns cast flickering lights on the wall, shadows decorating the wood.
It was in the midst of a brutal gust that Reed appeared, more confident now that he’d had time.
“You don’t have a lot of time, Reed, so I’d ditch the chess match and tell me directly,” Alexa warned, leveling him with a knowing gaze. “What do you want?”
He stalled, shocked by her directness.
“To warn you,” he offered. He sighed, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall.
It would seem nonchalant, like he wasn’t bothered by the immortal he now knew would come running. Like the distance between them would hide the way his eyes kept flicking toward the door.
Still not direct enough. The daughter of Athena sighed.
“Kiara is coming,” Reed supplied, quelling his anxiety so he could study her reaction intently. When there wasn’t even a flicker of surprise, he pressed on. “I don’t know when. I’m doing all I can to stall her, but you know how she is.”
Like Alexa didn’t have hundreds of letters, a testament to the younger Scuro’s devotion.
“I have a little more trust in her warning me than you did, Reed,” the brunette retorted as she stood. “I never have to decipher her intentions.”
The man rolled his eyes and scoffed, the action disguising the way he tensed at the reminder of his sister’s impulsiveness.
“Want to you want me to do? Tell her to stay at camp?” Alexa pressed as she inched closer. “Do you think she’d listen?”
Her gaze met his, stony and unyielding, hard in a way that Kiara’s had never been. Her mind was flooded with arguments and anger, bitterness that had been steeping for months as Kiara chaffed at his guidance.
Alexa flinched at the pain and betrayal, her steps stilling as her legs shook under the weight. She inhaled, her chest stinging with the strength of it.
“She has to,” Reed snarled. His hands dropped to his side, balled into fists. “She won’t listen to me. And if somebody doesn’t talk some sense into her, then she’s going to undo everything I’ve – we’ve – worked to protect.”
“Lilian made a deal!” She spat, slipping into the old way of disassociating herself from the girl who had freed the river Lethe. “I’m protecting myself!”
Her stomach dropped at the realization of what he was saying. She gasped as the poison surged to life, clutching her arm to her body as the black veins webbed through her flesh. Her knees buckled, her figure crumbling to the floor as Reed reached out to her but froze at the rush of footsteps outside her room.
“Alexa – just – trust me,” he urged frantically, his figure blurring in darkness and hysteria. “Tell her –“
His words were lost to her as blood rushed to her ears and she fainted, caught in an immortal’s embrace before her head could hit the floor.
