Author's Notes: Don't own Saint Seiya. I promise Ice and Chains and Forever Yours will be updated soon. I'm just getting this out of my system. It's just an internal look at Aphrodite.
True Beauty
Others had called him beautiful.
Breath taking.
Gorgeous.
Aphrodite of the flesh.
He'd never cared about such. He adored beauty, and he was fully aware of his own, but he didn't worship it. It was a tool, something to be used to throw off the enemy, and tilt it all into his favor. But that's all it was. It was useful, but he was not about to sit and stare at the mirror for hours admiring it.
No, true beauty was the sparkle of blood in the sunlight, how it splashed from a wound made. Those were the things he treasured, the knowledge of power over weakness.
That was how nature in its raw form worked. Those that were weak died, strangled out, hunted out, devoured, by the strong. Aphrodite understood nature better than he cared to understand the human world around him. Humans…were weak, looked only at the surface of things, were blinded by the trifles of beauty and didn't care to see why it was so.
It was the why that he truly adored. Roses especially drew his love and attention, and above all other works of nature he could use as weapons, they were his favorites. So delicate on the surface, gentle, symbols of supposed love. A human definition to be sure.
No, they were beautiful because it was a tool for survival. They drew what they needed to them, to reproduce and spread. They were vicious plants, underneath, the type that strangled other lives to gain nutrients and sun. They were beautiful to hide the terrible strength they had, the weapons they bore upon their stems.
He understood that. He used the same tactics to survive, had done so for a long time. From the very moment he'd been noticed by the previous Pieces Saint, even when he'd merely been the bastard child of a common whore. His mother had sold him off easily enough, and he'd gone without regret. Since then, he'd used the very gifts she'd squandered to survive, building his power under perfect skin and delicate looks.
He was different from the others that he'd seen. Far different. He didn't cling to Athena's skirt and beg eternal servitude. He would not, unless she proved stronger yet then he. No one would rule him, unless they proved they could. One did not rule nature, unless they made it submit to them. He expected to be forced to kneel, to have his back bent.
The previous Pope had done it when he had been younger, had seemed to sense that inherent brutal craving from him, the one closest to the Temple, and thus to the dwelling of Athena. He'd done it with barely a movement on his part, one attack.
Aphrodite had not dared to tempt it again. He understood power, and in time he'd come to understand true strength in its hidden state.
He'd known when the new Pope had taken up his place, and he had known who that new Pope was. He'd never say how he knew, it was merely the knowledge of a shift in power. This one, was lesser, was more equal to himself, but nevertheless, just strong enough to bring him down, to force him to submit to the greater rule. And he had done so.
When that boy had stepped into his temple, he had known what he'd been looking at. Had seen it without having to look. That boy had been so incredibly strong. He'd known that boy had outmatched him, would destroy him and he'd gone ahead anyways.
Because nature had to be defeated, to be moved. He would not bow, unless he was broken. And he would not be unless the other revealed just how strong he was.
He could have appreciated the flaming beauty of the other. Did appreciate it in his own way. But the boy's pleas to not struggle, to stop fighting, had been ignored.
Because he was as nature was, unable to give in till his last breath.
And even as he lay dying, he never regretted that.