A/N: Playing through 'God of War' made me really glad I don't worship the Greek Gods - although it's not as though my own Gods are terribly peaceable or anything. It also made me want to write fanfic. Have fun with it.
Pain, he could bear. Death, he could accept with equanimity.
The destruction of his only hope, however, was more than he could bear.
His only hope - to forget...to forget her, and what he'd done...
Somehow, on some subliminal level, he'd known that he had loved her then, breathlessly and without hope of mercy. He had loved her far beyond his quickly slaked lust, and, when that lust had borne fruit, had loved their child, too. He just hadn't realized it - not until his first love - war, his first obsession - had destroyed them both.
Not until it had been too late.
A cool sea-breeze washed over his pale skin, dragging him from his reverie. For an instant, he wanted to close his eyes against the dizzying drop - but no, he would die like a man; like a warrior. He would have that, at least.
Briefly, he wondered if the chill touch of death would finally cool the fever of his madness - or if he were doomed to an eternity of the memories, death or no.
Some small part of him recognized the irony, though he would have been hard pressed to clarify it to himself - he, who had sold his own spirit to the brutal War God to save his life, had chosen to die by his own hand.
It suited him, too - that the hands covered in so much blood would finally bear his own.
If only the Gods had been able to take the memories that a decade had not dulled...but there were apparently things even They could not - or would not - do.
"The Gods of Olympus have abandoned me," he said finally, surprising himself with the despair in his voice. And now, step by step, despair drove him to the edge of the cliff. "Now, there is no hope."
And, as he cast himself into the void, he could only pray that death would consume his memories, even if it meant his own destruction.