Stone and Stars
Sometimes, things would progress according to the plans already laid out, their path unbroken. And the rest of the time? Well…let's just say humans aren't called the most stubborn idiots in nature without reason. For your average Roman sculptor, life took a simple, prepared route: carve out his living as best he could, get a wife to take care of him when he grew too pained or old to hold a chisel, sire sons to continue the business and daughters to marry and make alliances, then die quietly and happy.
Then the Jagerjaques family sired a sculptor.
Ten generations of fierce generals, each with only one son to follow in their footsteps, and then Edzard Jagerjaques had the great fortune of having not one son, but two; twins, in fact. The entire city knew the family well- they had led many an army and protected their cities with the same passion and fierceness they dedicated to their families.
His beautiful wife, Pantera, had married Edzard after he brought her home from a battle- she had been the opposing army's tactician and a treaty for peace had been made in exchange for their best planner so they could not plan a sneak attack during retreat; upon discovering her to be a woman Edzard had fallen deeply in love. A strong woman, she had not only provided him with strong, healthy twin sons, she had lived to bear him a baby daughter as well and continued to be by his side many years afterward. Few others would have lived through the birth of the twins.
His wife was extremely exotic with her long sky blue hair, and they loved each other with passion and ferocity that matched each other, such to the point where neither ever took a lover. They were the only two people in the city who could boast they had never had an affair, though many pursued both.
Both sons were strapping, tall young men, just like their fathers before them, and the daughter grew as tall and muscled as her mother, and as beautiful. The younger son, Grimmjow, was blessed with his mother's hair, the elder, Ulfric, his father's chestnut locks, and their sister Neliel had somehow achieved a sea-green color of hair that had belonged to Pantera's grandmother.
All three were trained to fight as the fiercest of warriors, but at about ten years old Grimmjow began to show odd signs. He stared much longer at the statues and carved columns that decorated their home than he did practicing fighting, and whenever he passed by sculptors in the market he would often stop to ask them as many questions as he could think of about their craft and tools.
Edzard had recognized it. All Jagerjaques seemed to be born with a- it went beyond being a mere interest and was more than simply a talent; it was best described as an obsession. Most of them, however, were born obsessed with fighting and he remembered how mesmerized he'd been by the shine of a sharpened weapon, how he'd spend hours sharpening and shining his blade, learning how to detail them and how to carve in curves into forged metal to draw blood away from the hilt, how he had devoured knowledge of how to move and fight and kill. Ulfric already had the same symptoms as he had, but Grimmjow was…different.
Of course, Edzard hadn't given one whit that he was different as long as he was healthy- and he'd made many a sacrifice to the gods to ensure his family was safe. Still, he knew the obsession was beginning, and sat Grimmjow down to explain what was happening to him.
Then he secured an apprenticeship with the most skilled sculptor in the city and gave his son over to his new Master.
Grimmjow, as his father had warned, ate, slept, and breathed sculpting. Watching his brother fight, all he could see was how the image would form from marble, watching his sister dance he noted how her clothing draped to keep in mind for when he shaped the stone, and even when he dreamed he was sitting on standing before rock and hammering his chisel into it. His Master could never complain. However, the sculptor he served as apprentice to was as enamored of the art as he was; Grimmjow was the only one who had ever been able to last longer than a week. Recognizing the dedication and passion, he taught the young man all his secrets. He never had another apprentice, and Grimmjow inherited the business when the man passed on to the Underworld.
Everyone in his family had been given sculptures before he achieved his Master status- Ulfric in battle against a fierce lioness (he later swore Grimmjow was a seer predicting how he would one day have to fight for his life against the woman who became his wife- she kept him in line for the rest of his time in the world of the living), his sister dancing with a disembodied partner (again, prophetic, as her husband, when she found him, was so dark he appeared to be made entirely of shadows and was named "Death Wind" for his darkness), and his parents locked together with each other, hands clasped as they swirled together, chest touching and foreheads against each other's as they looked upon each other with all the love they possessed.
Upon becoming a Master sculptor, however, he wanted to do a very, very special sculpture all for himself.
Seeing as it was for him, he chose a marble he liked, its' peachy shade likened to skin, and its' integrity strong. It was especially difficult to carve, but this had no deadline- and he would take as much time as he damn well wished. As he had no wife, his sister and brother checked up on him frequently as he worked for a solid month on that stone. From it emerged a man, slightly shorter than he, lithe but muscled, horns at his temples and a flaming sword in his hand.
The man's hair was short and spiky like a bush, and he wore the garments of a God but walked barefoot. His eyes held at once both great ferocity and great warmth, and while his sword arm was in an aggressive stance his free hand outstretched before him, fingers slightly spread as though to welcome whomever he looked upon. He was a masterpiece.
Grimmjow had to touch the outstretched arm often, during the first week or so after the man had been completed, to make sure he wasn't alive. He called the man Ichigo, "he who protects", and explained to anyone who asked that Ichigo was an incarnation of one of the Gods, but that he would never tell which so as not to offend the other incarnations of Gods that he hadn't carved yet. In truth, he thought of Ichigo as the son of Ares, God of War, and was afraid if he ever said that out loud Ares would take offense (he'd given his 'son' horns like an Underworld demon, after all) and kill his brother and father and mother the next time they went to battle.
Most thought Ichigo a model posing until they greeted him and he did not reply- Grimmjow got a great kick out of that and moved Ichigo into the studio where he worked and conducted business. The silent, unmoving statue turned out to be extremely good advertising. He certainly showed how skilled his sculptor was.
After the second month that Grimmjow found himself needing to relieve sexual tension after staring at the sculpture too long, he began to suspect something was wrong with his feelings. He spent every spare minute pacing around Ichigo's small pedestal and staring at the lifelike marble, wondering, until he realized- his father's worst possible scenario had happened. When warning him of the obsession that would take over his life, he had equated it to a deep, possessive love that, once it got it's hold upon him, would stubbornly refuse to let him go. Edzard had escaped its' grip upon seeing Pantera for the first time and his love for her ensured he never fell into the dangerous clutches of his obsession again.
Grimmjow had a much more difficult problem- he'd poured so much of his love for sculpting into Ichigo, he was now in love with Ichigo.
Ten years passed. Grimmjow grew from the stocky sixteen year old he'd been into the six-foot-three muscled man he had been molded to be, strong enough to move a block of solid marble larger than he was without much trouble. Ichigo retained his place of honor, his body gaining the gentle rounding to chiseled edges that could only be gained through age and acquiring color as Grimmjow would sometimes take free time to 'finish' him.
His hair became the orange of sunset (no pink, Grimmjow might love him but for the God's sake, he was a man) and his eyes an enticing light brown. He became garbed in a robe made for him by the city's Weaving Princess, Orihime, who had seen the statue and thought it so charmingly lifelike she'd wanted to give him a gift. He also came to have flowing blood-red markings along the left side of his face. Grimmjow had possessed no intentions of painting any such thing, but it had struck him like lightning one day- Ichigo absolutely had to have those red markings painted on his face. Why, he never knew.
Grimmjow's love for the statue only grew as the time had passed. He was enamored of his creation, and over the years of women throwing themselves at him desperately, desiring his money and his prestige and (most importantly) his youth and passion, he'd become more and more disgusted by women in general over the years. Obviously he didn't hate his family females, and any woman who respected him before she lusted after him he would also treat with respect, but any woman whose attitude clearly revolved more around getting at what was under his toga than about him as a man or as an artist was immediately shunted into the 'disgusting' category. Sadly, that accounted for most of them. He stayed steady in his love to Ichigo.
Unfortunately, his family noticed his irritable attitude toward unappreciative apprentices that fled after less than a week under his tutelage and his nearly feral fury for anyone who approached him for marriage or a relationship. His sister recognized it from watching her parents interact over the years- her brother was in love, deeply and passionately in love, and refused to betray that love with anyone.
Her father got the same way when propositioned, as did her mother, her brother, and his wife. Neliel herself had nearly beaten several men to death and had to hold her husband back from strangling strangers who dared to try and lure him from the love of his life. However, he'd never been seen with this love of his, so she surmised he or she was already married or otherwise beyond his reach.
Their family, like any good Romans, from Emperors to the homeless, sacrificed and gave to the gods regularly. Being blessed by so much good fortune, they of course gave their thanks, and often, and rarely, if ever, prayed for anything. They didn't like to be greedy and were good at doing for themselves. Grimmjow, however, was obviously not going to be able to do this on his own, and since Grimmjow wouldn't ask for something himself (he hated selfish fucks that went to the Gods over every little thing) Nel decided she would do it for him. She took a goat to Aphrodite and sacrificed it, then prayed quietly and solemnly for her brother to get the person he loved so dearly. She had no knowledge of what would happen afterward.
Grimmjow generally told anyone who cared to listen that yes, he believed firmly in the Gods, but he also firmly believed they had better things to do than sit around and listen to humans pray and bitch. This was true- but, of course, it was also true that Gods were able to hear all prayers directed to them, particularly if made sincerely. Nel's prayer for her brother qualified and caught the Goddess of love's ear.
Aphrodite used her power to look into the 'love' of the girl's brother and her eyebrows both went up when she was presented with a lithe young man that looked alarmingly like her brother Ares and yet at the same time unique and different. She examined the depth of his love for this simple object, and found Grimmjow loved his creation just as fiercely as his father loved his mother, and his sister and brother loved their spouses. He really did love him, with all his being, the way she'd made his family to love their others.
Smiling mischievously, she swirled her fingers through the image before her and watched how, despite being only stone, he seemed so alive. She decided it would be cute to grant the heartfelt prayer, and give Grimmjow his love. She looked forward to finding out what would happen.
Grimmjow woke very, very late that day. He'd been up until nearly sunrise the night before trying to finish a woman atop a horse in full battle regalia. Walking through his studio to get to his kitchen and fix himself some breakfast (he thought it cruel to make a slave work under the conditions he did and had no wife, so other than when his family dropped by he had nobody to look after him and cook his meals) the first thing that caught his eye was the statue by the entrance- or rather, the lack of one. Ichigo was gone.
Grimmjow collapsed for nearly ten minutes, insensible.
After Grimmjow was able to get up from where he crumpled to the floor, he realized an extremely odd thing. Ichigo was gone, but the pedestal on which he stood had not been moved in the slightest. And in the two places where his feet had rested were odd crusted depressions that were in the exact shape of his feet and toes. Had the statue been stolen, the pedestal would have gone with, and he knew no person able to chisel out the feet of a statue in this manner in a single night. Something else was going on.
"Oh, you have wakened. Good afternoon, Master."
Grimmjow turned so fast he nearly fell over. "I-Ichigo?"
The young man stood before him, horns, flaming sword, and all. "Yes. I am sorry I scared you- I heard you fall."
Grimmjow scrambled to him and wrapped him up in his arms. Giving flesh met his and he knew for certain then that his mind wasn't leading him astray- Ichigo was come alive. Taking him by the shoulders and backing up, his fathomless blue eyes searched Ichigo's shifting brown ones. "How…?"
Ichigo smiled, running his hand over Grimmjow's shoulders in a familiar gesture. Grimmjow made it every morning when greeting him, reassuring himself that Ichigo was still safe and really was only marble. Which he apparently no longer was. "I do not know, and nor do I care how. Come. You have yet to eat." Without further talk, he seized Grimmjow's hand and yanked him into the kitchen, sat him at the table, and set his sword in his belt..
After he was fed, watered, and bathed (Grimmjow prodded to each by Ichigo, who kept demanding he finish his 'waking ritual' so stubbornly the sculptor almost felt like an animal being trained) he finally managed to make Ichigo set aside his sword, sit down, and tell him what the hell happened.
According to Ichigo, he'd simply been watching over the entrance as he always did when he'd got the sudden urge to stretch, and the next thing he knew his body had been moving and it had been easy to step right down from his pedestal, which he called his 'guard post'. Then he'd set out to make a few rounds of the studio and attached living quarters to check all was well before Grimmjow woke.
After a while, Grimmjow had to ask- "Why do you speak as if you are a hired guard? When you could not move, you certainly weren't able to guard if a thief came stealing in."
Ichigo grinned. "Simply seeing me in the dark was enough to scare off most. And I am your guard, Master Grimmjow. It was you who named me your protector, was it not?"
Grimmjow considered. How did Ichigo know Japanese? Hell, even Grimmjow didn't know much, only what his father and mother had picked up while battling in distant lands. "Makes sense, I guess. But- wait, you remember that? How far back can you recall?"
The demi-god statue scratched the base of one horn, shivered, then caressed the other as he considered how to answer. "I remember back as far as being cut from the other beings in the stone beneath the earth. The 'quar-ree?' I have heard everything you have said to me, and remember it well. You and your Master are correct when you speak of the figure within the stone just waiting to come out; I was the spirit, the figure, inside that particular stone. My thanks for bringing me to a proper shape. I recall back to the darkness within the earth, where the other spirits kept me company."
Grimmjow's jaw dropped. "Then- you remember when I carved you? What does that- what does that feel like? Did it…hurt?" He fidgeted uncomfortably- if the stones he carved contained spirits that he hurt when he cut the stone, could he continue to sculpt? He loved sculpting, but he had absolutely no desire to torture spirits to do so.
Ichigo only laughed. "Of course not. As stone, we can see and hear and feel, but we feel no pain when you bring us forth from the stone. It feels strange, though, when you strip away the excess and shape us…it feels…almost as if we are shedding layers upon layers of clothing, and when you create our details it…it is like you have described your baths- as if everything is becoming clear and the dust and dirt marring us is being taken away. If anything, your sculpting feels…good."
Grimmjow was trying to pretend he wasn't alarmingly aroused at Ichigo's tone of voice when Ichigo started caressing him. "Ichi, what…what are you doing?"
Ichigo purred and ran a finger up his side, touching his skin through the slight gap in his toga. "You made me jealous, you know, Master…"
Grimmjow pretended he hadn't just moaned from such a simple touch. It was embarrassing. "I…wha…? Ichigo…"
The statue answered him as he pulled the bigger man's legs over his own and walked his fingers up toward his waist from his knee. "I saw how much passion you put into me, how much care and time and effort. I felt so special, so warm and loved…and then I go and see you do the same with each piece that leaves this studio. It made me jealous as any of those women you have sent away crying, until I saw that thing in your eyes you have when you look at me. It is not there for your other works, and never appears when you look at women. It is almost like a flame, and I had never known such a thing to reside inside eyes before. I thought you another God for quite some time. It took watching the same spark within your parents' eyes as they looked upon each other for me to know what it meant…that you love me. You still have to pay for making me so angry and unhappy, Master. However, I think you'll like my punishment."
While he moved, breathed, walked, ate, and felt like any mortal man, Grimmjow quickly learned Ichigo was as unyielding as marble when he strained against the gentle hands pinning him to the floor by his shoulders. Then his beloved's lips met his and all struggles ceased. He silently thanked whoever had worked this miracle for him and promptly lost himself in his first kiss of true love.
High above him where she lounged before a mirror showing the pair, Aphrodite chuckled and stirred her finger in the pool of love they were creating that she could add to her power. "True love is always welcome in my realm. The pleasure has been mine."