Never Forget, Lest We Fade
Note: If any of you noticed, I screwed up the title for the last chapter. Our little secret ;)
Rhea: She lives forever, in the shadow of her husband's reign and crimes.
2. Shadowed
[No! Not him! Not my son!]
She wakes, sweaty and absolutely undesirable, from her nightmare. It is mostly the same one – do others dream of different things? find a new horror captivating them each night? – and she is always afraid.
(No , my dear Rhea? She fears nothing!)
She cannot deny that these have kept coming for a while; that she is scared by them. Why? Why dream of something if there is no significance to it? (Oh, yes, where is the fun is easy? Where is the challenge in the never-ending path of sameness?) Why dream of the same thing if there is nothing to remember; if there is nothing to haunt you?
"Come, come, my dear Rhea. Give me the child . . . yes, just a little closer now." One little step; one little betrayal; one other child lost – but no, not lost. [No, this time I win, dear.]
Such betrayal, such loss; why does her past become mixed with these things? Why is it her divine youth is not a blissful wonderland? It was him, she thinks to herself – the rational side says. But no, he loved you; children would create a rift, argues the side that loves him; the side ruled by emotion.
"Yes, yes; such a good wife . . . you will be rewarded now . . ." [But, no, I don't want to be rewarded! Let me bask in my glory, since you seem to not see it!]Her screams of sorrow – he thinks they come from pleasure, but he has always mixed the two – ring out, and Mother seems to ignore her.
Her dreams will not let her forget; her past stalks her into sweet nothingness. If only she could have drugs to allow her to enter the house of blackness; out of the blue, into the wonderful white blur of remedies.
[Sometimes Titans aren't always the bad ones here, dear.]
