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@wereachandfall-blog
@godforsakenthing
“ ---- oh, gods.”
Eyes are closed, thoroughly and firmly, hands slightly raised in something like panic. He’s faced all manner of men and beasts in battle, ridden hard for god-kings and monsters that no man had seen before them. This? This is something he never was brave enough for.
“I didn’t mean ---- I’ll just ----”
starlightsulu:
“ If you tried, it wouldn’t do a lot of good. ” It’s play, the wolf dabbling in uncharted waters; and though the water’s deep, there’s a certain clarity there; a kinship that crackles at the air to pop and split the doubt that lingers in the air. Suspicion a constant, but presence offers a strange ease.
He shakes his head. Doesn’t take from those unknown ( rarely does, even with those he does ). “ I can get my own, ” he says as he moves to take a seat, legs crossed and posture straight. A turn, his gaze flicking away as he thinks.
Sulu hums, his head tilting and fingers tapping. It’s telling; the wolf won’t give the immortal his name. A smile. “ Call me what you want. ” A tap against his ears. “ I’ll listen. ” If he feels like it.
Refusal is accepted with good grace, and the water is capped once more, tucked back into his bag. He settles himself, too, and turns his head to watch the first slow rays of sunlight creep over the horizon. A deep breath pulls itself into lungs and courses out once more.
This is what he came out here for. This feeling of peace, as if the world has been written over anew.
“Well then, I shall call you νύμφη,” he muses. “There is something of the nature spirit about you. Unless I miss my guess, you have seen the sun rise more times than most men.”
It’s something learned in the fields of Elysium, in the shadows of the gods. Somewhere between the banks of the Styx. He has met gods since, full of scorn for their waning powers, full of anger at what they have done for him, and recognised each and every one. This boy is not a god, but nor is he man. That much is clear.
immortalspxrrow:
@wereachandfall also gets a thing
“Should I take this to be our newfound pattern, then?” Jack thought he caught a glimpse of familiar blue eyes, when he first stepped into this hole in the wall of a pub. He’d just assumed it was yet another trick of his mind.
“Am I to expect a visit only when I’m obscenely down on my luck?”
“If you just so happen to be obscenely down on your luck whenever I happen across you, that’s no business of mine.”
A quiet smile touches the very corners of his lips. This little sparrow always did have a penchant for getting himself into trouble. And perhaps Phae has a penchant for checking up on him. Sometimes he’s seen, and more often he’s not.
“Perhaps you could try being obscenely down on your luck a little less often.”
immortalspxrrow:
“I’m sure I’ll find use for it.”
He’ll be moving on from here soon enough. Three decades is quite a long time to stay in one place, and the boys will know to find him, once that happens. Perhaps he can sail to his next haven — more likely than not, his shiny, new (old) compass will stay safely hidden in his cabin.
“And where, may I ask, did you find this shiny relic?”
Gaze dips to follow his own fingers as they trace the lines of engraving on the compass held loose in Jack’s hand. Smile tucks itself at corner of mouth, and when he glances back up through his lashes, it’s knowing.
“Dived for it. Off the Amalfi Coast.”
Questing fingers had pried it from its resting place in the clear depths -- the same fingers which had cleaned it, later, on the sun-drenched shore; the same fingers which had fixed it up, replaced the parts that needed replacing.
“It was that or a two-for-one on navy rum.”
immortalspxrrow:
Jack hums curiously, distracted, dark eyes committing the lines of a familiar face to memory once again. There’s a smile on his lips he can’t hope to erase.
“Is it shiny? Can I drink it?”
“Maybe. Former, not latter.”
Fingers rise to feather familiar path across Jack’s cheek, casual touch that is ingrained between them, by now. And then something is slipped from his pocket, pressed into Jack’s hands. He folds the man’s fingers around it, warm from being so close to skin, weighty.
A compass. Old and holding the taste of history, gold-engraved.
“Just in case you needed the traditional kind.”
godforsakenthing:
@wereachandfall
“So is it always twenty years? Do you set a date on the calendar or something?”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who he is. She’s heard enough stories of him over the years, and honestly, there’s something like a protective knot thrumming in her chest.
Jack spent most of her life waiting for this guy. He better be worth it.
“No.”
Hephaestion, immortal soldier, who has faced every sort of horror down throughout the ages, shifts a little nervously where he stands. She’s direct and she’s not backing down and it’s obvious that she cares for Jack, and all that makes her dangerous.
“Sometimes it’s longer. Sometimes it’s shorter.”
How to explain to one who has not experienced the stretch of eternity? Hephaestion loves Jack, and he has loved a hundred others. His heart is not like a sliver of soap that gets smaller as the water works at it. Every time his heart is new, and whole. To leave and love another is not to cease loving Jack. It is a refuge, a respite from the forever. A reminder of the rest of the world, of himself, who he once was and who he is.
Sometimes he wanders the same paths he followed Alexander on, all those many centuries ago, pushes across the deserts and into India, towards what they had once thought was the edge of the world. Sometimes he deliberately avoids them. Always, he returns.
immortalspxrrow:
Jack has an argument ready. Full of ridiculous and unimportant reasons as to why yes, it does, in fact, matter which route Phae took. Except the man has the audacity to call this home, and all his words fall away. This dock, and this old bar. Jack’s chosen refuge for the last few decades.
Home.
“I suppose you are.” Sunglasses discarded on the dock, Jack stands to face him. A grin that’s too soft to be anything but fond, crooked though it may be.
“And pretty as ever, too.”
“Some things never change.”
There’s no humility in his agreement, but no vanity, either. A contentment with it, with the words and the belief behind them, the way they’d been offered unprompted, like a gift. He steps closer, and slides in Jack’s space like he belongs, like he never even left.
“I brought you a present.”
godforsakenthing:
“Yeah. He went out for a walk.”
There’s something niggling at the back of Dean’s mind, some half buried fact that’s ringing a very faint bell. But he shoves it down, because they’ve warded this place to high hell, and there’s no chance this guy is some kind of monster.
At least not the kind they can ward against.
“Should be back in an hour or so, if you wanna hang out.”
“I’ll wait.”
He’s got, quite literally, all the time in the world. He hasn’t seen Jack in years - decades - and an hour or two more won’t kill him. Had he been alone, he would have wandered behind the bar, upstairs, like the place was his own.
(It would be again, soon enough.)
Instead, he behaves himself. Settles down in chair, tips his head curiously at the man leaning against the bar.
“ -- are you his latest stray?” he asks, kind good humour in his words and no offence meant. Jack will deny it, but he takes them in -- the wanderers, the underdogs.
@cruentusreus
He’s stacking copies of the Iliad when Stiles tumbles in, scooping them up from the intimate little circle of desks he teaches at. He prefers it to standing in front of them like he’s lecturing; there’s not enough of them. It’d feel ridiculous.
“If you were here for the translation class, you’re an hour and a half late,” he comments, dry and amused, well aware that Stiles doesn’t take his class. “There’s no club today, either. It’s Thursday.”
A clarification he knows it’s best to make; he himself had experienced enough strung-out, exhausted days where he’d pretty much lost track. “What’s up?”
immortalspxrrow:
“——You say that like it’s a common occurrence.” Yes, he’s aware. And he’d appreciate it if Phae would keep from calling them soldiers — unfortunately close to the truth though it may be.
“Took the scenic route back, this time, did you?”
The look that he fixes on Jack is well-worn, familiar. It’s amusement stretching lips into a smile, one eyebrow quirked. It’s indulgence that suggests without the need for words that Jack is being deliberately obtuse.
“Does it matter which route I took? I’m home.”
starlightsulu:
“ — and that’s why you’re here ? ” The truth is sweet against his tongue , entwined with the honey of the stranger’s scent . Duty is what makes him question ; wariness , what makes him doubt ; and curiosity is what makes him take those extra steps forward ( Nature helps , a gentle nudge of the wind ) as he speaks , head tilting as he waits for an answer .
Though violence may have been carved in his history , engraved in his bones , there’s no sense of it here . There is no weapon seen with metal’s taste ; the tang of blood that often stains not only tools , but the hands that use them . Peace , he thinks of the word again , sees it in the other’s motions . No ill intent , no danger in the air .
“ I’ll join you , if you are . ” Lips press together with an attempt of friendliness . “ This was my spot first . ”
A smile, tucked like a half-secret in the corner of his mouth. The boy is curious, and wary in his measures. Hephaestion does not mind it. It reminds him, just a little, of another boy he once knew. Young and old all at once, headstrong and with a thousand questions cradled in his soul.
“By all means -- I don’t intend to take it from you. I’m only a visitor.”
He pulls the bag from his shoulders, drinks deep from a flask before he proffers it to the stranger. It’s only water, but it’s cool and it’s fresh, and gifts given linger in his nature, honour still a hard currency to the man who lived for it, in his youth.
“What can I call you, stranger? Or should I call you ξένος?”
godforsakenthing:
There’s a guilty sort of start, even though he’s had a key to this place since he was fourteen years old. Also probably because his sasquatch of a brother is pretty naked upstairs.
(Sorry Jack, they’ll wash the sheets.)
“Nope. Not Jack.”
“This place is Jack’s, though?”
He’s pretty sure. He’s good at finding Jack. He’s been doing it for hundreds of years now. Hephaestion always leaves. He always comes back again.
“He know you’re here?”
@godforsakenthing
“ -- you’re... not Jack.”
Not that it’s unusual for there to be people in Jack’s bar. It’s generally a popular enough place, wherever he might have set up this time, and despite his penchant for occasionally leaving the place closed in favour of his boat.
But it’s midday and the place is supposed to be closed, and the man is draped across a chair like he belongs here.
@immortalspxrrow
“Still collecting strays, I see.
---- I mean, you are aware that you have two freakishly tall soldiers down in your bar?
starlightsulu:
“ Relative . Depends who you are in it all , ”
They’re different stories , he supposes , where for him , the white he woke to had been a saving grace : a promise that came with a willing trade ; a sacrifice for that they both lost . His smile is sly as ever ( for it’s what happens , when often in the company of the fox ) , crooked , and boyish — the youth of a pup bound to an older entity , a once - deity now forced to wander .
Suspicion , where there is curiosity that tips the balance of information ; expectant : the stranger’s little piece , offered for one of his own . But trust is a weight too heavy , and the young wolf doesn’t know yet of the machine that measures them : what is there to gain ? ( he’s not sure ) . and what is there to lose ? ( everything ) .
“ Never was one . ”
Nothing too cryptic — the obvious stated , but the origin hidden ( this , he thinks , is enough ; this , he thinks , will do ) . He shrug , the smile shifting , a little soft and all the more knowing ; that glint of the spirit harboured in the flecks of silver in normally warm brown eyes .
“ Not many people do . Some of us prefer the peace and quiet .”
“Perhaps.”
There’s no malice, there, no outward anger, for all the bitterness of long years simmers always low in his gut. There’s only caution, an unwillingness to accept at once what might endanger, somehow. No questions. Perhaps he doesn’t need to know, just yet, or perhaps he simply doesn’t care to. A name is nothing. A man’s deeds are his only badge.
Peace and quiet. That’s what he’s here for, chasing the sunrise in the absence of cars or people of the sprawling spread of human civilisation, growing every day and a constant reminder that the world is not the one he once marched to conquer.
Perhaps the stranger is a threat, but Hephaestion cannot bring himself to wariness. Not in the cool pre-dawn air, not up here. He sits, without ceremony, fingers carding into long grass still damp with dew, uncaring that it will soak and stain his clothes.
“You have chosen the best place for it.”
starlightsulu:
Dawn smells of early warmth ; sun’s rays against the blades of green and a breeze that follows carrying floral’s sweetness and the crisp of fresh water . Common , peaceful , further lulls him into sleep much needed ( he’s lost count , once again , of the days that’d passed — feet sore , pads of paws a little more callous , he’d stopped to rest in Nature’s refuge ) .
It’s scent that’s picked up first , carried by that very same breeze : honey and something old — the heavy scent of gold that burned , and the sharpness of an Old war . It causes the wolf to stir , eyes silver when they open , before it recedes to the normal golds . A shift , wolf form now gone , replaced with the skin and teeth of a man . Camouflage , of sorts , unlike the coat often worn .
Yet despite it all , footsteps silent , Nature’s grace pulls the sound beneath him ; no crackle of leaves gone dry , no snap of twig or crunch of dirt . Silent , scentless , and the wolf stalks his potential prey .
He watches from a distance , the glow of eyes dull as body lowers — head tilts , curiosity at intent ( it’s alright , the mountain soothes with a gentleness often found on those cool and quiet nights ) , for there are few after all who were often tempted to wander here .
Ah , and it seemed that he’d been spotted .
Lips pressed tight , corner tugging upwards , his head ducks first at least , to peek out from where he’d hidden . “ Don’t smell like one , ” he says . “ And before you get any ideas , I don’t eat people . ” Not often , at least .
“It is not being devoured that men ought to fear. It is being spat back out again.”
He turns, finally, clear eyes roving across the shadow-clad landscape in search of what has spoken. Golden eyes catch the glint of second-hand starlight, still waning. Hephaestion is surprised to see the youthful curve of face that stares back again.
Then again, what is a face? Who among many would guess at his own antiquity, at the years tucked away behind these smooth features and bright, sweet eyes? He is too delicate to bear age like the ancient oak. Instead, he carries it like a mantle, somewhere in the step of his foot and the set of his spine.
Whatever stands before him, it is a contradiction of itself. He regards, steadily,
“I am not one, any more,” he says. There is a hardness to his tone, the only touch of wariness about him. The gods are thieves and liars and tricksters, and Hephaestion has done with them. “And neither are you.”
He tips his head.
“Though what you are, I can’t be sure. You have the reek of the gods about you, but none I know.”
