I fell in love with Thena and Gilgamesh as soon as I saw them in "Eternals", and I love everything about their platonic relationship and what little time they had together. This fic is my idea of what their first days in Australia could have looked like and I really hope you'll like it. English is not my main language, so as always I'm sorry for all mistakes (please, remember that we're all human and that we're writing here for fun). Title of the story and the quote at the end of it is from the song "Only you" by Little Mix. Enjoy!
"I'll watch over Thena. Let her keep her memories."
His decision was immediate, so that it didn't seem to be a decision at all. At that point, no other option seemed more natural and suitable. It was the only right path to choose. It was how it should be.
It was natural. He knew it, felt it with his entire soul, and even her gaze full of disbelief couldn't change it.
They traveled the world for a long time after disconnecting from the rest of their family, in search of a suitable place to settle down, safe for both people nearby and her, before finding what they were looking for. The oasis in the middle of the Australian desert turned out to be the perfect place, for they knew that the continent's ecosystem would provide them with peace and security not only in the year 1521 but for many decades, perhaps even centuries, to come. Here she could be herself without worrying about hurting someone. Mostly, anyway.
They built their small wooden house together and with their own hands. It looked similar to all the houses they saw in the area, but at the same time it was completely different. Their own. Having lived among people for so long, they learned to appreciate what they had and what the environment provided and find beauty in it. Their little house was not the home they missed and wanted so much to return to, but it was a reflection of everything they had grown to love outside of it.
It was giving peace, and that was enough.
She was different than before. She was talking with him seemingly normal, but there was a lack of that spark of mischief in her voice, of that little something that made her herself in her movements. Her eyes turned dark and cold. She wasn't laughing anymore, no matter how many times he tried to cheer her up. He was doing everything in his power to make her feel well, calm and happy, but she kept looking at him as if not for all the tea in China, even that beautiful Eternal mind of hers, could understand his sincere selflessness.
He wanted her to understand. He wanted her to see that what he was doing for her, he wasn't doing out of pity, but because he knew that if he had been in her place, she would have done exactly the same for him. Like her, he wouldn't want to lose his memories, deny a part of himself, become a problem, a burden that others would have to bear. He wouldn't want to leave, stand alone face to face with his demons and count the days to the end of the world in solitude. It wasn't her fault that she fell ill, the Mahd Wy'ry could have caught any of them. Healthy or sick, she was much more than the problems she struggled with, and she didn't deserve to give up on her.
Every day he was quietly begging her to finally see it.
Their relationship was not romantic, although the word love could describe many things connecting them. Battles fought together, goals and dreams shared, it all was bringing them closer together for many centuries, and over the years the friendship grew into something that ordinary mortals couldn't understand and even they themself had the difficulty to name. They were more than friends, more than even family, ready to go through fire and water for the other one at any moment. They were connected, they complemented each other in every possible way, and even the Mahd Wy'ry was unable to separate them.
But every day she she was looking at him as if the fact that he was still with her was just an illusion, another manifestation of the illness that she couldn't control and that would finally be her end. And every day he was praying to Arishem and all the gods they had ever heard about in hope that one of them would hear him, begging that he might switch places with her and take all this suffering on his shoulders, for he wasn't ready for a life in which she wouldn't be by his side.
Her episodes were the most frequent in the beginning, and it was then that they were the most difficult to manage.
One day he awoke from his afternoon nap, which turned out to be longer than he intended, and for a moment he let himself stay in that blissful state, until a flash of lightning and loud thunder lifted him to his feet. "Thena?" He walked around the house before going outside and finding her there. The air became dry and thick, and the sky was covered with ominously dark clouds. She was walking towards him with a handful of clean laundry she gathered quickly to keep it from being blown away by the wind. "Here you are. Come on, let's get inside before it gets…"
First there was a loud boom, the earth shook beneath their feet, and then the old tree by their little house burst into flames, struck by a lightning.
When they both looked that way, and when everything she was holding in her hands fell to the ground, he knew that the lightning destroyed not only the tree, but also another part of her. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
The last thing he remembered was her delicate silhouette turning towards him against the dark sky and lit by the flames of the fire, and her eyes, turning milky, staring straight at him. Then everything went black.
When his eyes opened again, he didn't know how much time had passed. It was dark, but also quiet, which meant the storm was gone. Good sign.
He blinked a few times and shook his head to clear his mind, then looked around. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. He was inside the house, half lying on one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Except for a few broken things on the floor, everything seemed to be in place. Another good sign.
He turned his head to look out of the window and only then noticed that it was raining, an unusual phenomenon in this part of the world. He shook his head again, and this time he looked at himself. He was dirty and a bit sore, his shirt was torn in several places, and bruises were starting to appear between the few cuts and dried blood on his hands. He was fine. He got up from the armchair he didn't remember sitting on in the first place, with a quiet sigh, walked to the door and opened it wide. The rain was a nice change from the long lasting heat, he thought. He held his hand out in front of him, letting raindrops fall on it and wash it from the sand.
Then his gaze fell on the almost completely burned tree and the clouds of smoke rising above it, and his blood chilled in his veins.
He turned immediately and ran back to the house and began searching every nook and cranny of it, opening all the doors one by one. With every passing second he still couldn't find her his heart was beginning to beat faster, and his imagination began to suggest all the darkest scenarios, in this oh so human-like instinct which taking over form the inhabitants of this planet he didn't want to admit.
When he entered the small bathroom it was so dark he almost didn't notice her at first. She was sitting on the floor, curled up in a corner and shaking as if she was about to break into millions of tiny pieces. When she heard him enter, she began to move even further until she completely clung against the wall, looking like a wounded animal in a trap. "Go away," she spoke, her voice shaky and hoarse. As he took a step toward her, the whites of her terrified eyes flashed in the darkness. "Go away!" She moved violently in her panic, which caused her to hiss involuntarily, and then he noticed a bloody stain on her side on her white, dirty dress.
"My god, Thena. You're injured." He quickly went to the cupboard above the sink and took out a first aid kit, then, ignoring her protests, he approached her and knelt beside her. She was sobbing, shaking, and doing everything to get away from him, although she obviously didn't have the strength to do so. She was exhausted and terrified, and all he wanted to do then, even though he knew it would only make things worse, was to take her in his arms and hold her in them until it all went away. "It's alright, you are safe now." He raised his hands up, slowly moving closer to her, and when he glanced at them, his heart broke as he realized that the dried blood on them didn't belong to him, and that it was him who had accidentally hurt her. "Oh, Thena, my dear. I'm so, so sorry I hurt you."
She looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
"You are sorry?" she gasped. "I attacked you, and you defended yourself. I would have killed you if you hadn't."
He knew the risk, he knew that all it took was for him to be a second too slow one day, a little less careful, to lose it all. It didn't matter to him, as long as he could be here with her. She was the meaning of his life. If he could give it for her, it would be the greatest honor he was ever met with in the many thousand years of his existence.
"Please, let me have a look," he asked, nodding at her side she was tightly clinging to. For a long moment they were watching each other in utter silence and stillness, the only sound that could be heard in the room was her rapid, uneven breathing. He could see the fear and uncertainty in her eyes, and the reflection of how intensely her broken mind was working, trying desperately to find a way out of a situation without one. He waited patiently, a soft question painted on his face. Then her eyes got wet again and she lowered her head, finally giving up.
He gently grabbed her hands and pushed them aside so that he could get a better look at the wound. It was oblong and quite deep, it would certainly take longer than both of them would wish it to heal completely, but it wasn't life-threatening. A few stitches, proper care and a few days of rest in bed should do wonders.
He didn't want to think about how much force he had to use against her, or how close it was for the whole incident to end in a much worse way for them both.
He soaked the gauze from the kit with alcohol and pressed it against her skin, making her hiss with pain. She had to be really drained of energy by the episode to allow herself to show weakness in someone else's company. She groaned again as he began suturing her wound. "You should have killed me," she said quietly, watching his hands work. "You should have finished this when you had the chance. It would be better for everyone."
He suddenly stopped moving and looked at her so intensely that after a while she had to look away, seeming genuinely confused. He quickly finished suturing her and wrapped the wound in clean gauze, then he held his hand out towards her face, grabbed her perfect chin with two fingers and gently forced her to look at him.
"Never, ever, say such things again. You are not your illness, you are Thena, goddess of war, the strongest being I have ever known. You live and fight, and you will keep on doing so, because I will always be with you, I will support you and take care of you, because you deserve this and so much more. You're not alone. I won't let anyone hurt you."
She shook her head. "I'm the one that keeps hurting you. I could have killed you, Gilgamesh. I'm a threat to everything I care about. I could have killed you and then I don't know what I would..."
"Hey, hey, enough," he cut her off, catching her face in both hands. Her pale cheeks were wet with tears. "I'm here, right beside you. And I will stay here until the end of the word. And so will you." He smiled softly and ran his thumb over the porcelain skin near her eye. "We will stay here and we will last, together, for eternity."
He didn't know what was going on inside her head, nor could he name the emotions that flashed in her eyes then, but he was sure of one thing. He meant his every world. And he was going to spend the rest of his life proving it to her every new day.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she hid in his embrace like a little child hiding in its mother's, fearing the world and the evil that lay within it. He could feel her tears soaking his shirt as she pressed her face in the crook of his neck, but she cried quietly, and he let her do so, stroking her back with circular motions and placing kisses on the top of her head. He began humming a soft, calm melody that he remembered from when they lived in Babylon. He rocked them gently to its rhythm until he felt her heart slow down to its usual speed, and her breathing calmed down. They froze in place after a while, and though neither of them spoke anymore, they had no intention of moving from the cold floor in the dark bathroom, because right there, right then, they were together and safe, and nothing else mattered.
He didn't realize he had fallen asleep until he woke up in the morning. It was already light outside, he was still sitting on the bathroom floor, covered with a blanket he didn't remember getting, and she wasn't in his arms or anywhere else in his sight.
He got up, stretching his bones, and went out to the terrace, suspecting he would find her there. She was sitting with her usual grace on a bench in front of the house, dressed in a clean dress, staring up at the blue sky, with a mug of steaming red tea in her hands. A second cup of the same size stood on the ground next to her legs, waiting for its owner.
He walked over to the bench, bent down to reach for the cup, and sat down next to her without a word. He sighed, glancing at the burned tree, which had stopped smoking already, and then he followed her gaze and looked up at the sky. The sun was caressing their skin pleasantly as they sipped their tea in silence.
"I'm not going to get better," she said after a while in a low voice, still looking ahead. "I will never magically recover, and each next episode will shorten the number of days I have left on this planet. Sooner or later I will die, and without realizing it, I can take you with me."
He looked at her. The sun's rays were illuminating her face and hair, giving it a golden hue. "I know," he said simply.
Then she looked at him too, and their eyes met. "Then, why?" The intensity of the green of her irises took his breath away as she looked him straight in the eye, finally being able to ask aloud the question she had been asking him quietly every day since they arrived in the Australian desert. "Knowing all of this… Why are you still here?"
He grabbed her hand with his free one and smiled. "When you love something, you protect it," he said. His answer to the question that troubled her so much couldn't be simpler, because he felt as if he had known it all his life, even before it all began. "It's the most natural thing in the world."
A single tear rolled down her cheek, gleaming while reflecting the sunlight, and her mouth opened slightly, but she didn't say a word, too stunned by his confession.
He squeezed her hand in his and looked back to the sky, still smiling.
They will be alright. They will get rid of the destroyed tree and plant a new one, and care for it until it grows even more beautiful and majestic than the previous one. They will fight for another new day, month, and year, side by side, and they will enjoy every moment that they will be given a chance to spend together, until fate will temporarily tear them apart, and they will have to wait a little while longer before they meet again. But until then, they'll be fine.
He didn't know how much time they spent silently sitting on the bench in front of their wooden house, holding a warm cup in one hand and the other's hand in the other, but it didn't really matter. After a while, he noticed her getting closer to him from the corner of his eye, and then he felt her put her head on his shoulder, and though it seemed impossible, his smile grew even wider.
Right then and there, they were both where they belonged.
Once upon a time we had it all,
Somewhere down the line we went and lost it,
One brick at a time we watched it fall,
I'm broken here tonight and darling, no one else can fix me,
Only you.
THE END