still life.
.
.
"À toi, pour toujours."
One.
.
Memories of his childhood were like gazing into clouded glass. The last thing Camus could remember of his mother was her tears, heavy trails of regret streaming down a beautiful face he didn't recognize. He could not say if she was alive or dead, though he was sure that his father, the wealthy owner of one of the proclaimed vineyards in Vosne-Romanée, was still doing well.
Either way, they weren't really his, nor was he really theirs. The only things that they had left with him were the whispers of unkept promises and the blood pumping through his veins.
It was both the beginning of everything and of nothing. Camus hadn't truly realized what any of it meant until much later. The following years were, after all, a blur of pain and air so cold it was almost suffocating, himself too young to remember but too aware to forget. The few memories that he could truly recall in detail included the voice of his teacher, aged and strong, and the color of blood on snow.
It was beautiful— the dying sky before it burned out into black. The color of her hair against porcelain skin. The color of both his blood and theirs. It was enough.
Perhaps those memories were too precious.
He froze them, together with himself, so that they might stay beautiful.
.
.
"I'll become stronger."
Two.
.
The borders between Russia and Finland had endured a hard winter the year Camus met Isaac. It must have been that the snow had chosen to mark their encounter, drifting from the sky in soft flurries the moment a childish cosmo touched the back of his mind— feather light. This boy had already been condemned, beaten and orphaned, but still inexplicably strong.
"The more winters I live through, the less they'll be able to hurt me," It might have been the look in his eyes that had sealed Camus' decision.
He was a young boy full of energy and focus. Though Camus was still young himself, he found himself adjusting well into the role of a teacher— something that would become more apparent when a second boy was sent to be trained under his guidance. This one was far different from Isaac in both strength and motivation, but Camus had accepted him regardless.
It was almost foreign, the way the two regarded him with such open admiration.
"What do you think, Hyoga?"
Camus shifted to glance at the two boys seated on the floor of the small cabin not too far away. The moments between training were always quiet; usually the boys would take the time to treat each other's wounds and chatter quietly about their lives— and the future.
When the other boy looked to him in question, Isaac continued, "Do you feel stronger yet?"
Hyoga smiled. "Yeah."
"You'll catch up to me in no time." That characteristic determination was back, swimming in his eyes like a wildfire. "... What are you going to do after you become a Saint?"
This time, the smaller boy visibly faltered. "... I don't know."
"Alright," Isaac grinned. "Once we become strong Saints like our Master, we can figure it out together. So don't give up before then."
Perhaps if Camus had considered Hyoga's odd behavior more seriously, things might have been different. But, years later, all of that fire and potential would sink to the bottom of the icy sea.
"Isaac!"
Hyoga had crumbled near the broken ice and cried for hours, until he was both physically exhausted and half frozen.
À toi, pour toujours.
Camus found him in that state just before the sun fell, and said nothing.
.
.
"I can't accept that."
Three.
.
Even in the worst of situations, there is no choice but to move on. Memories of Isaac were buried, frozen somewhere among familiar visions of blood on snow, dying skies, porcelain skin. Hyoga's training immediately became ten times more difficult, and the boy had accepted it without a word of complaint, submissively enduring it as if it were punishment.
It wasn't. Nor was it punishment when the ship containing a beautiful corpse sank to the bottom of the sea, sleeping now with the old bones of a condemned child. It wasn't punishment when that one remaining boy was thus encased in ice.
Perhaps he was just too precious. Perhaps now he might stay beautiful.
"Forgive me."
Camus ran his fingers along the ice before departing, breaths coming out in whisps of white smoke, clouding the surface like the glass of forgotten memories. The last thing he could remember of that moment was his own tears.
À toi, pour toujours.
It might have been unlike him to hold on to a distant hope until the very end. But the avid desperation to stop Hyoga's progression forward was eventually smothered by the student himself.
His own death was the most satisfying and fulfilling thing Camus had felt in a long time, and at the same time the most regretful.
"... Well done, Hyoga."
.
.
"You knew what this meant."
Four.
.
Gemini Saga was an interesting individual in his own right. He had always permeated a great deal of strength, but at the same time it concealed something inherently soft. At the core was a sort of devotion to his goddess that perhaps none of them would be able to rival. It was ironic that he was one of the first to fall, and the catalyst for a good deal of things that had gone horribly wrong.
Camus had never judged him, truly. He could not blame Saga for his own actions; he had been aware of his position since the beginning, all of his choices carefully set to his own ordained duty. No man could have altered that.
And so, when Saga had approached him between a haze of death and rebirth, he hadn't hesitated.
"I will follow you."
Nothing could have properly described the trek forward, like struggling against a heavy current. Camus had never really understood the meaning of relying on others before that moment, three depending on one another's strength at each falter. That idea was only reinforced at the loss of their senses— and, with their cosmo igniting as one, the lines that separated them individually had all but vanished.
Three drowning in shame and tears. The clouded glass shattered. A flame was extinguished.
Head spinning, the only thing Camus recognized was Saga's determined presence leading the way and the distant warmth of Athena's cosmo.
"I hate you."
Camus heard him loud and clear.
For a Saint, victory was only ever bittersweet, paved with a sin disguised as justice. There was no real sense of accomplishment or pride— only duty. It was something that Camus' entire life and even beyond that had depended upon. It was something that he could not let go even when a painfully familiar grip encircled his neck, shaking with the heavy burden of betrayal and despair.
À toi, pour toujours.
He knew the other was crying even if he could not see. He felt that there were words that he should say even if he could not speak.
In the end, he could do nothing. The grip eventually slid from his throat, dragging down his chest, the weight of someone's head falling against him for a brief moment.
"Milo..."
"Shut up."
Camus faintly realized that he was crying, as well.
.
.
"À toi, pour toujours."
Five.
.
Camus wondered if all things at their climax came full circle.
But that wasn't entirely true. Perhaps then Hyoga would have also sunk to the bottom of the icy sea, sleeping with a beautiful corpse and the old bones of a condemned child. Instead, he was here. If Camus had been anyone but himself, perhaps he could have assured the boy that he had never been a disappointment.
It was a very detached feeling now, but Camus knew that it was indeed Hyoga clinging to him desperately, willing him not to disappear.
Maybe he finally understood a little better.
There was something like a vague sense of satisfaction from Saga's direction. Hyoga's grip tightened involuntarily. Out of a whim, Camus reached up, fingers brushing bandages he felt he should recognize but at the same time did not.
"Camus..."
Perhaps these memories were too precious.
Hyoga could keep them— freeze them within himself, so that they might stay beautiful.