[𝒯]here is aught in obire that exults in Timothy, as a compeer rather than a culmination. And he, teeth grided, bile rising, blood upon hȳd, meets him with a smile.
He has long surmised that love and war are not bane but kindred, do ut des: to love is to fray, and to make war is to hallow. Troy taught it apertly, desire rived the gates where fryds fell; love was not the casualty but the marrow. So the false antithesis collapses. Thus he stands as he does: sarcinarious ℛobin, son of Venus and lieutenant to Mars — 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒٫ 𝑠𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑟. If love may stay a war, then war exacts blood; if blood is given back to the earth, the earth names it love. Yet the dead do not prevail. The living do. To persist, therefore, is itself an act of love, the body bearing aeipathy forward under covenant and cost. This is the law that binds him.
Now, he is a ruby lodged in an emerald isle. 𝐼𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 is sanguinary with chēle tonight. The air cuts his skin as it inngans unshackled through the bresten window, needling the wound already opened. He looks down at the glass strewn like teeth across the floor. At the room’s disorder. At the wall stripped bare where something sacred once hung.
δόρυ του Ὀδυσσεύς 𝑇𝘩𝑒 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝛰𝑑𝑦𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑠.
For centennium it was want: losian to bruit, disrated to apologue. Heroes and monsters alike soht it and languished. Then Mars proposed a game. A dare. ‘ Find it, if you can. ’ And not to misqueme, Timothy did. How obscene, that it should be found on Ὠγυγίη ( Ogygia ) He laughs despite himself at the irony: the relic in the hands of a collector — Atlas O’Houlihan. Of course. He should have known better, prescited he is. No game set by a god is ever solitary. 𝑄𝑢𝑖𝑟ī𝑛𝑢𝑠 had come for him. The Roman spear incarnate, the first name beneath what New Rome would later call Timothy, 𝑄𝑢𝑖𝑟ī𝑠, wielder of the spear. Quirīnus had been tracking him from the moment he was given the spear of Mars. He remembers the struggle: the god’s face close enough to spit prophecy. The words flung like verdicts as they grasped for the δόρυ του Ὀδυσσεύς. ' That spear should’ve been mine. It has always been mine, ' Alabandical blateration! ' I will not let you take that as well. ' And with that famelicose, the spear answered. It tore across Timothy’s abdomen, a mancation of the flesh.
He looks at the wound again. The red blooming into the carpet, his thysiastery. The cold easing, almost familiar. As if the body, desarcinated, has remembered something it was once. If he is to die here, what shall he resarciate? An apology to the amorevolous Venus, for choosing war over love? A prayer of thanks to the phalerated Mars, who named him Robin and set him beneath his banner? Or a confession to himself: that he fought ichorescently, that this would be an bonifate death?
He lifts his eyes to the window. The canitude hangs full and commanding, urging rest. It tells him to pessundate. To labascate. Then, “ This again. You have to learn to be more careful. I’m going to start thinking you’re doing this on purpose. ” @lusmor's voice is palpable. Familiar as breath. ❛ Éiníní, ❜ Caprizant breathing, ❛ Oh, how I’ve missed you. I didn’t think you’d come. I really didn’t. Are you finally here to bid me goodnight? ❜










