Epistrophia

All stories are housed in the cosmos. When man forgets, they remember.

Eros spent most of the day sulking. Harmonia was far too small to be left alone, and with both of their parents away from the palace for their work, he had been tasked with his little sister's care. He, who had only recently taken up his bow and arrow! It was most certainly not fair. Harmonia ran from room to room after an iridescent, sapphire butterfly, her bare feet smacking the marble floor. He watched her casually at best until the main door opened, and Harmonia abandoned her quest in favor of running at full speed to greet whoever returned first.

"Papa!" she cried joyfully.

Thank the very cosmos it wasn't Hermes! Eros unfolded himself from the divan on the open-air back room where he'd found himself perched a few hours into Harmonia's butterfly catching escapade and made for the opposite entryway. If he could get permission quickly, he could be off and still have enough time to do something before his mother returned.

"-It had silvery wings, and it was all blue," Harmonia was saying quietly, as though divulging great secrets. "It was so pretty, Papa. I couldn't catch it, it was too fast, but it was very pretty and I think you would've liked it."

"I would've loved to see it," he amended. Eros drew nearer; his fingers were itching for his bow. He could nearly feel the slight weight of his quiver against his back, and he lusted to shed his chiton and venture out where the wind could catch his wings. Even in his father's absence, the entire palace was hot purely because of the enclosed rooms. Zephyros, Boreas, Notos and Euros were responsible for not only his freedom, but his thriving.

As he entered, the question died on his tongue. Harmonia, in all of her running, had tired herself to the point she was nearly asleep on Hephaestus' shoulder. Her baby-fattened arms clung to his shoulders, only partially keeping herself aloft while her eyes batted slowly. Though by all accounts, she should've been passed off to be put to bed, and he should've returned nearly immediately to beg to be let out of the house, he could not place the expression on his father's face. It was unlike Hephaestus to be troubled; he took pride in work and even more in refusing their relatives the satisfaction of baiting him into an ill mood.

Eros was hardly noticed at first. Hephaestus carried Harmonia to her bed and gently unwound her tiny limbs from him. She sunk into a pile of soft, finely crafted animals made of fabric, and went immediately to sleep. Though he leaned, in part, on his crutch, he attended to tucking her in himself. It seemed to carry special weight, and a thorn of discontent appeared in Eros' stomach. He backed out of the room and waited. Moments later, Hephaestus emerged, the thin, wooden door was closed, and the two stood, alone.

"Something's happened," Eros said. He wished it were a question.

The responding inhale of breath sounded too much like Hera not to be serious. Up until then, he supposed he'd been hoping it was only exhaustion on everyone's part. He should've avoided asking. If gods weren't deathless, he might've been more concerned.

Everything up until that moment seemed to move very slowly. Eros was drawn in and embraced tightly, embraced like comfort was being given and sought at once. His arms rose mechanically and only squeezed when something was finally said.

"Regardless of all else, you are my son, and I love you."

"Regardless of what?" he repeated. "What's happened?"

Silence was his only reprieve for a moment. Of course he didn't know, hadn't known, couldn't know – everyone, it seemed, knew but them.

"Nothing that needs to be worried about now. You were going to ask to go out, weren't you?"

Eros hesitated to nod.

"Go. Have fun. Return when you've had your fill; there is a shortage of love in this world."

Where he should've felt a measure of anxiety, only sadness took hold of Eros' heart. He nodded again, murmured his thanks, and slunk back to his room. He gathered his bow, but only half his quiver; the arrows of disdain were no longer useful.

He had not been gone long when Aphrodite returned. Hearing nothing in the forge, she assumed she'd returned first, and found Harmonia asleep. A soft smile graced her rich, pink lips, and she headed toward the enclosure where her son usually spent his sullen moments. Aquamarine satin trailed behind her steps. "Eros?" she called quietly, in case he'd fallen asleep as well. "Eros?"

"He went out."

She startled just before the door and an olive hand fluttered over the first of the pristine folds in her peplos. Her eyes, blue as the daytime sky, only warmed further. Eros' divan was untouched, though Hephaestus took up the other. He did not recline, but sat on the edge with his back to her. She approached with barely audible steps and slipped her arms around him from the access he'd given her. Her chin rested on his shoulder, and she murmured, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm happy to see you getting out for a change."

"I was out for a change," he replied. "Lemnos. For a week."

"I know," she replied, withheld laughter like a lace trim on her words. "I never know whether to ask if you had fun or not."

Helios had no reason to lie. That was his only credibility; the only reason Hephaestus put any weight in the family's rumor. Aphrodite had never been unkind, though at times she'd been a bit flirtatious with his half-siblings. She who was love gave her love equally, in any form. Small animals received her love, children, the elderly, the sick, the cruel; Aphrodite loved indiscriminately. Her only cruelty, so far, had been telling Hera she could've done better. It was not untrue.

While she rested against him, her fingers massaging soft circles into his muscles, he could not remember if he'd been partially prepared to confront her. What frightened him was not her response, but his lack of surprise. It was never fair to her to bind her to one place, one man, when she was love herself.

Her hands withdrew only to settle on his shoulders. The more he considered her, the more the thought of asking her pained him. It couldn't matter to her, if it was true; it shouldn't to him. It shouldn't. He wanted to tell himself that it didn't. Her thumbs pressed into his muscles in just the right places, forcing the tension out. She drew up to her knees and kissed his jaw.

"Are you happy?" he finally asked. Her tender touch never subsided, her lips never faltered in approaching his.

"Yes," she replied; that was the thing they had in common the most, neither minced words.

"In marriage? To me?"

She did withdraw then, but her eyes twinkled like they held the very stars in them, and she was even more radiant when she smiled. He turned toward her in part to slip his hand into her hair. Curls like black ribbon tumbled over his fingers, and as he guided her forward, her own hands cupped his face. Prior to the meeting of their lips, she replied, "If I was unhappy, don't you think I'd let you know?"

He couldn't stop himself from laughing, once, before he kissed her. Of course she would, she who curled against him as though keeping the unborn Harmonia warm, she who was incapable of denying love to anyone.

"I love you," she said, though that had never been under question.

"And I, you," regardless.

"Does this mean you don't love us anymore?"

Everything in the palace seemed to stop with Harmonia's question. Hephaestus placed his hammer down, picked her up with a gentle boost to meet his eyes, and gently took hold of her chin.

"I will always love you, turtle dove. Eros too."

"Mama too?"

"A lack of love was not the cause. She'll be happier unbound from me."

Harmonia frowned. She would've argued the contrary, but Eros collected her in absolute silence. He spared him only a sympathetic glance, met with a brief nod, before he left in quick, fleeing steps.

Aphrodite entered the forge. She hesitated to enter fully, her lips a set line and eyes downcast. Her jaw clenched visibly. Neither spoke, nor moved toward the other. After a moment of watching her sandals, her eyes lifted. They looked like gemstones. Her fingers curled until they were tightly clenched fists, though not toward him. Her nails bit her palm, a bit of pain to take the edge off.

"You could've asked."

Ares had been on top of her in their bed, silvery sheets wrinkled by the two of them. The thin, golden threads that made the net were supposed to have been Ares' armor, supposed to be impregnable. Another man's wife was supposed to be, too, especially one's brother's. Ares wasn't worthy of that. He hadn't been there for the net's descent, hadn't heard their screams summon the Olympians, summon their son who watched in horror as Poseidon and Apollo went to laughing bits and cold-hearted Hera turn Aphrodite's panic into judgment. "You are no longer worthy of my son," she'd said, and that he'd heard; he had the distinct impression she'd been practicing that line since she, herself, made the match.

"I didn't mean for that to happen."

The worst part had not been seeing Ares on top of her, still locked with her, or the thought that he might've continued after they were trapped. It hadn't been the way the Olympians looked at him, like this and only this made him worthy of their recognition, even though the three of them would be a collective joke from then on, it had been the moment their eyes locked and all of her betrayal poured forth in saltwater tears. He had been betrayed, and yet his betraying her, even unintentionally, caused him greater pain.

"You could've asked me," she repeated. Her voice broke, and there was no longer any way to go about this like adults. He righted himself, intending to go to her, but she stepped backward. Her eyes were already rimmed with redness, painfully bright and beautiful. "Why didn't you just ask me, if this mattered so much to you?!"

"This wasn't about you. This was never about you."

"So teach him a lesson some other way!" She drew the soft sleeve of her peplos to her eyes and dabbed at them lightly. She wanted to save face; pretend it hadn't hurt as deeply as it did. "You humiliated me. I don't care if you wanted to frighten Ares, you frightened me."

He only let the silence maintain until he thought she'd be angry with him if he didn't respond. "I wanted to kill him."

Her eyes widened. Certainly, she must've known he wouldn't carry it out. Certainly, she must've known that he would've embarrassed Ares, made sure he knew who bested him, and sent him away like a whining puppy with his tail between his legs, never to be near her again. He reasoned that she must've known.

Instead, her eyes rose toward the ceiling and she pressed a covered fist to her mouth. "You could've asked me, and I would've told you-"

"But I didn't."

"But you could've!"

He moved away from the anvil only to remain outside her spatial bubble. Aphrodite dug her nails into her palms and shook her head vehemently, "No. No, stop that, if you would've killed for me, if you really…. Act like it! Just act like it! What are you afraid of?!"

He wasn't sure he knew how to articulate that answer.

"That's why I didn't tell you! You're so good to me, you're always so good to me, and… and I don't know what you expected. You never so much as looked at anyone else."

Words bubbled forth that he couldn't use. There was no point in them. Because he loved her, but she loved him and she had and that wasn't the problem. Because he respected her, but she hadn't disrespected him, it was only her nature, and he was logic-minded enough to understand that.

"Stop that. Just tell me how you really feel, no understanding, no excusing. Please."

He was silent for a moment or two longer. To Aphrodite, the silence was worse than anger; she was used to Ares and his confrontation, she could return what he gave out without an issue. Hera had, in fact, given her the perfect husband – and they were to be no more.

"Helios told me some weeks ago," he began, and half the air in Aphrodite's lungs left in a rush. She could've laughed; he knew, and they'd been together, and very little had been different in his mood or mannerisms. "I do mean that, I was never angry with you. I was rather upset with myself that I was not more surprised, and then I wasn't. Ares and I may not be close, but I've been good to him-"

There was just a glimmer of the inferno, and it finished releasing the remainder of the breath she'd been holding. He had too much self-control to let that which caused so many other issues wreak havoc in him. The knowledge that it existed brought her peace, as did his subsequent steps toward her. "and he still had to have you."

Had it been any different of an occasion, she would've attempted to point out that he had been raised by Themis in the sea, loved and cared for, and Hera and Zeus had simply given Ares to Enyo. He'd returned and got his petty revenge on Hera, made friends with Dionysus, and Ares returned to be a hero just like Zeus' mortal children. He'd spent eons fighting for their love, the one thing any war could not secure. Had his fire not relieved her, she might've told him how Ares would've never admitted to finding solace with her, calming his storm, laying in the privacy of darkness with her in the aftermath and allowing her to hold him and soothe him the way he would never allow anyone else.

"That's fair," she replied.

"It's more than fair. I wanted to humiliate him. I wanted to finally piss him off the way he does me, I wanted him to look at me and remember that I was his younger sibling and still his better. They hardly know either of our names, even though we sit on their council, and yet he always wins."

"Would you rather he loses?"

"That's not the point."

Another step. He wasn't angry, but his eyes burned like the hearth, and she did not want to let him go. "I love you, and I was going to fight for you the only way I know how."

Her traitor hands trembled. Her posture softened; she'd wanted some manner of screaming match, something satisfying that could set the precedent for the rest of their days, but she ought've known the man who'd asked for her consent to marriage even after Zeus and Hera decided they would be wed, the only man of all those she'd shown love who cared more about whether she was happy than if it was ideal for him, would give her that.

"You don't have to lose me." The words came out on a breath. She wanted so badly to be angry, and she would be later, when she had to see someone who had seen her bare and messy, but he only closed the last, lingering step between them to draw her close. "As my wife, I do. That was never fair to you. As my friend, my first love, I never will."

"Friend?" she teased. "I'm coming back to you, you know. And you'll have to kick me out of bed by hand."

"You love him." Though his tone was as gentle as it had ever been, it threw a spark inside of her.

"I wish it had been you."

"I do too."

Ares would let her make stupid decisions. Ares would encourage them. He would get the best of her, and he would get the worst of her, and perhaps she would've reveled in that if he had been her first. The only man she would ever call her husband wrapped his arms around her. She closed her eyes for only a moment to draw in the sensation of every built muscle surrounding her. She drank in the warmth of his skin, the brush of his rough fingertips through her thin satin, and the brush of his scruff against her cheek. In those last moments, she turned to memorize the tenderness of his hearth-fire eyes, and leaned up to kiss his cheek. She would not ask him to carry a torch for her. So long as these were the last moments that they spent in love, she could not imagine a better conclusion.

"What's going to happen to us now?"

Eros watched his little sister as she broke off small pieces of her ambrosia and placed them cautiously on her tongue. "We move into the new palace, with mother."

"I don't like Ares," she replied, "He scares me."

Eros' stomach grumbled. He let her keep the chunk of rich, golden sweetness all to herself, though he considered, briefly, risking intrusion to fetch himself some.

"You and everyone else."

Harmonia's eyes went drachma-wide. Eros bolted to his feet, outstretching his wings – they were gold like ambrosia, like nectar, like Olympus itself.

Ares' expression was unreadable. Perpetually armored in some form, his chiton was as red as drying blood. Light plate armor covered only his chest, while bronze-studded leather gauntlets, black as his eyes, encased his thick wrists. It seemed, to Eros, a great irony; of course their mother would love them both – he who created light and he who snuffed it out.

The elder god stared at them not unlike a wolf with prey. "You could be his." He spoke almost casually, though Eros noted how similar the brothers might've been. Ares was blood rather than flame, tanned and hardened rather than heat-warmed. Eros' own skin was a tawny, sun-warmed olive. Though, unlike either parent, both he and his sister were fair-haired; perhaps a latent gene from Demeter's side of the bloodline.

"I could be," was all Eros repeated. He was not ignorant to the subtle harmony of the marriage; his parents didn't paw at each other like wild animals, though Aphrodite wasn't known for her discretion. "As could Harmonia."

At that, the war god's expression twisted. He smiled, thin lipped and cruel-looking. Tiny hands gripped the back of Eros' chiton as the child in question drew herself closer to him. The young archer's fingers itched for his bow. He'd wipe that smile off his face if he had the chance. Perhaps that was specifically his intention, inciting violence; Eros would've taken his bait if it meant defending the honor of his family.

"Come here, girl," Ares said as he took up the perch Eros vacated. "You're safe."

Eros noticed that he hadn't said he wouldn't hurt her. His hand ventured backward, skimming a down-soft arm. She seized hold of his fingers and held on for dear life, though his heart was pounding nearly out of his chest and he was fully aware that if it came to actually fighting Ares, he had no chance of keeping her safe.

"Ever met your brothers?" he asked.

"I have no brothers," Eros replied, whether the question was meant for him or Harmonia.

"Phobos and Deimos are your mother's children; you may not claim me, but you don't denounce her. They are your brothers."

It was his turn to go wide-eyed. The gods of fear and terror were not unattractive; he'd always assumed it to be in the vein of whatever was under the war-god's helm. Perhaps the most frightening part of the experience as a whole came suddenly; in studying the other Olympian, comparing his features and Aphrodite's to the twin gods in his mind, Eros found more than a few that could've been his own. His teeth set.

"You're not my papa; go away," Harmonia finally uttered from behind him. Her face must've been pressed into his back far enough to muffle her words slightly.

Ares never softened. "And if I am? Aren't you going to feel bad about saying that to me?"

"I already have a papa." Her protests only grew in strength. She might've been crying; Eros couldn't feel it. "Go away. Go away! I don't like you! You're mean and you're scary! Go away! I want my papa! Mama!"

Eros' wings flared. He didn't fully understand the expression that rose to Ares' eyes; his face remained neutral, frighteningly neutral, but something that might've been hurt but also might've been anger flared in his eyes and died out quickly. His heart jumped and stomach tightened at the idea that his own mother found something in those eyes; his war-titan nursemaid probably beat the emotion out of him. The longer he stared at Ares, the more he rationalized she couldn't have wanted him willingly. He could've been like Zeus without the façade, he could've manipulated her, it could all be one grandiose misunderstanding and without a doubt they were both the children of the man who raised them, cared for them and loved them.

"You're not supposed to be here."

And just like that, all of Eros' hopes were dashed.

Aphrodite stepped out of the open-air sitting room and joined them in the yard. Her lover rose and the hardness in his face dissipated significantly. It was probably the closest he could come to tenderness, Eros thought. She went to him, regardless of whether he ought to be there, and clasped his chin between her delicate fingers. He bent to her, and the habitual significance of the motion blew apart all of Eros' theories. They kissed once, briefly, and she gently pushed him toward the open grass.

"Off with you," she teased, "before you make my husband any angrier."

"What's he going to do?" Ares responded. It might've been teasing; he couldn't quite get his tone there.

"With any luck – and I mean luck for you – take that golden rope and string you up by your balls." She pushed him toward the way he must've come, and he let her do so until he saw fit to stop. She paused her exertion to give him a playfully stern look only to be met immediately with a much softer smile in return.

"You're alright?" he asked. His hand lifted like he wanted to cup her cheek, but his fingertips only grazed her jaw.

"I am absolutely fine. You, however, are going to be one of countless men murdered by a jealous husband."

He grinned. She didn't. Her gentle pushing resumed. "Go on, go, away with you until no one wants to kill you."

"Until he doesn't want to kill me."

Aphrodite rolled her eyes at the cheeky amendment and nudged his back until he left the property on his own. He stopped walking when she turned toward them, though, and Eros let his wings begin to droop. He watched Ares watch his mother return to them and scoop Harmonia into her arms. His tiny sister buried her face in the crook of their mother's neck and purposefully crossed in front of him to take his arm.

"Come now, the both of you; your father wants you in for the night."

"Aren't we leaving?" Harmonia asked. Her short, slightly chubby fingers linked behind their mother's neck, and Aphrodite kissed her nose.

"Not right now, turtle dove. Mommy and Daddy spoke like grown-ups."