Firestorms
Tiamat's Child
The city burns below. The city burns, and Cassandra stands before the statue of Artemis in her temple, pleading. Andromache watches her, afraid not to go to her, afraid to leave the small huddle of women and children who sit on the cold marble slabs. Too many people need her.
Cassandra is far from coherent, words tumbling from her lips like dreams. She isn't sure what she's saying. Something about begging the goddess, to save them, protect them, that she knows that she has to die, that she's seen her death but please spare the others, it isn't right, why should all the women of the city have to die because she refused the sun god, please- And she knows that if she could only remember the right words, the prayer that begs protection, then none could touch them. But she cannot remember.
At last her voice gives out on a sob, and she crumples to her knees, her fists striking the stone tile and bouncing back. She shakes with the force of her grief and fear. No one listens. No one ever listens. If only they would listen everything would have been all right. She can feel the air touch her skin, for she isn't wearing much more than a short shift. The air is cool, but already carries a hint of hot smoke from below.
Andromache goes to her, and lifts her head up, wiping her tears away with fingertips. Cassandra shivers, and stares up at this woman who she loves more dearly than any save her twin brother. She can barely see through the haze of salt water, but she can feel the concern in Andromache's touch. And she's burning, seeing her own death, a knife cutting into her in vengeance for the actions of her captor.
Andromache can see the god madness take Cassandra, sweeping her away again. She cups her face gently, and speaks. "Come back, please, stay with me." And Cassandra hears her, from far, far away, and reaches up, slipping her hands into the fallen tangle of Andromache's hair. She raises herself up just that little bit, so that she can kiss. And here, in this heated, painful moment there is something of life before, and a day on the wall of the city, when the wind blew clean from the sea, with no scent of death on it.
Cassandra can feel her body tense, her breath knotting. Andromache's lips are scarred on the inside edges from ten years of biting the skin away in worry. Cassandra tries to soothe them, moistening them with her own mouth. She tries to erase them, tries to kiss them away so they won't be real anymore and Andromache won't have to carry them. That's something very important, that Andromache not have to feel her scars.
Cassandra is fevered. Her skin is hot and brittle under Andromache's fingers, like the fine parchment that the priests use to write records. She's ill again, as she's been all too often of late, and Andromache remembers a time when her skin was warm and she was healthy and whole. She kisses her, trying, in some vague, desperate way, to bring that time back.
The city burns below, transmuting their lives into ashes. The city burns, and the Greeks will find them soon enough, and this place is not truly safe. But that is later, and for now there is this, kneeling on holy ground, trying to hold back time.