1516 – Venice
"If you are Ariadne, where is Theseus?" The boy with the golden smile asked the young goddess.
Taken off guard for the smallest of moments, the goddess turned over her shoulder and fixed the young man with a strange, puzzled expression.
Their eyes met.
His eyes were all at once colorless and golden. Star-hazy. Blue and green. A storm of technicolor, as if every color in the world had been mixed into the complicated reflections and tensions of his gaze. The effect was disorienting like looking into a dark well of colorful water and magic.
The edge of the young goddess' lip twitched as a smile threatened to blossom across her face. "If I am Ariadne, shouldn't I be dead?"
The god chuckled. "That depends." His eyes flickered low and handsomely. He cocked his head, studying her face with a gaze that burned and pulsed with ancient, dangerous things. "Would you die for the love of some oft greater thing?"
2024 – Knowhere
Thena forgot that the floating mining colony of Knowhere was the severed head of a Celestial. But then again, she was never the one who remembered that sort of thing. That was Phastos. Her older brother knew everything about the cartography of the planets, the stars, the dimensions, and the expansion of the universe. He charted their pathways through space and settled their routes through the galaxy.
Thena remembered how he would roll large maps out across the floor of his lab, ensuring that there was nearly no room to walk. Why are you even in here?! He would snap at Kingo as he stood amidst those intricate maps, preening himself in the reflection of Phastos' shimmering tools and devices.
You could literally go anywhere else, Kingo.
Yeah, but, Phil, it's only in here that the light works for me. I wouldn't expect you to understand – it's a hot person problem.
At that point, Phastos cursed in five languages and threw Kingo out. And not by asking.
She couldn't blame her older brother – Kingo made a test of everyone's patience (perhaps more so than Druig, at times), but Phastos was good at knowing things. And fixing things. And understanding the hard-to-say emotional things. The god of fixing hearts and broken things.
Her brother.
A sharp pang of yearning ran through Thena as she paused amidst the chaos of Knowhere, bending slightly as she rested her hand against a wall. Sudden tears welled in her eyes.
She'd done it. She'd finally found herself entirely alone. Isolated, and without the threat of her coddling siblings. And now that she was out in the middle of space, with a death wish, and a mind that was stretched full of foreign memories, all she could do was miss her brother.
Desperately.
Phastos would have known all about Knowhere. For example, he would have known that in the years since Thanos came and nearly demolished the total sum of the colony as he searched for the Power Stone, this planet had practically become even more of a hotbed for illegal and unregulated black-market trade. The fewer the people, the easier it was to get away with crime. Rare and dangerous space rocks, species, and tech were sold under the table, while the NOVA Corps, the only competent regulation force in the galaxy, struggled to regain their footing on Xandar. Thanos may have been gone, but the destruction and resultant consequences in his wake were still very much visible.
Thena pulled herself from the wall of a strange, purple-colored repository structure and tried to regain her composure. Great green eyes shifted to the sky as the neon-colored gaseous clouds of the Celestial's carcass covered the stars of the night sky. You're all alone, Thena, you have to remember. This is reality.
This is what she wanted. To be alone. This is reality.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled the hood of her golden cloak over herself and turned to walk into the crowds of aliens and space folk gathered around. Aliens from across the universe could be seen gambling at betting rings, while some haggled for artifacts and extra-terrestrial substances. Markets and makeshift stands made of unknown space rocks and wood were placed on either side of the pathway, while hordes of creatures yelled and pushed past her.
A short distance away, a fight broke out between two Genowbians. Large, scaly creatures with sharp threatening teeth. They spat and slithered at each other in an unknown hissing language. The merchant pulled a rather large intergalactic rocket launcher out from underneath his counter and shot one of the Genowbians straight through the chest. His sticky, mushy blue blood caked the face of his friend.
The buzz and chaos of the scene did not pause, however, just because of a simple murder. Aliens moved on and skirted past the twitching carcass of the Genowbian.
Thena's face wrinkled in disgust. "Disgusting."
None of this was what she was looking for, however, as she pushed through the crowds. She had one man in mind that she needed to find. A man who would have loved to have an eternal in his Collection. If Ikaris was anywhere in this vicinity, as Phastos had charted, he would be there.
Walking nearly through to the end of the market, Thena spotted something in a crate chalk-full of what was assumably "ancient Earth artifacts," since the sign above it said: ANCIENT EARTH ARTIFACTS. Clever naming on the part of whatever alien had decided to haggle off junk from Earth.
Pausing, she debated whether or not to ignore it. She'd lived on Earth when it was so-called "ancient." She didn't need to be sorting through rubbish that humans had never really valued much anyway. She turned away, bracing her shoulders as she turned to go.
They wrote it about me, he had once joked, lifetimes ago.
Something inside of her gut felt twisted. With an anxious glance backwards, she stared into the artifacts. Something stared back at her. She reached for it, picking it up between her hands. A clay tablet. Babylonian. Seven thousand years ago, Akkadian pictographs had been pressed into the wet clay with a fresh reed stylus. The scribe, hand-picked by the king, had begun a story. The Epic of Gilgamesh.
For when the Gods made man,
They kept immortality for themselves.
The seven-thousand-year-old ode they had painstakingly created out of clay and reed and fingerprints was written about the man she loved. Gilgamesh. The god of incarnated strength. With his golden fists and booming laugh, he had inspired one of the most sacred, influential pieces of prosody ever written.
Fill your belly.
Let your wife delight in your embrace.
For these alone are the concerns of man.
The basic facts of all life.
And they got it from him.
Gilgamesh did not teach these Earth-born people how to fight or how to cook (as much as he might argue), but he taught them how to love.
Thena's vision was blurring at the edges. Narrowing. Clouding. Mercurous. This empty, sharp world around her began to fade. This was not reality. No. Reality was with him. It was always with him. He made reality real.
It was 1607. Munster, Ireland.
No longer the busy, dangerous markets of Knowhere.
Thena was with him now.
His lips pressed close to her temple. He was holding her close and telling her he loved her. Powerful arms were wrapped around her, protecting her from the sea mist as it blew off from the cliffside. Above them, the overcast sky drizzled chilled flecks of sweet-tasting rain. Thena's hair was matted and damp against his shirt, but Gilgamesh never cared. Her eyes closed as she listened to the roar of the bay below and the thumping of his mighty heart in his chest.
Thena could not remember what it was like to be a child on Olympia, but she knew this is what it must have been like to be safe, to be close, to be held.
Nearly leaning all her weight against his, she shifted her cheek against his chest, so their eyes met. And as they always did, his soft eyes met hers. Thena was convinced the way their eyes met had to be some kind of cosmic event like that of the Big Bang. Expanding and surrendering to the forces of the universe that drew them together. Soft brown and sharp green. Gemstones of the earth clashing against one another across the short distance from his eyes to hers.
"Naekkeo," he whispered to her. "There's something I have to tell you—"
There was a break in the vision. She was no longer in Munster. Now, it was centuries before.
Thena was standing in a sky-blue ocean. The water was lapping against her ankles.
A little girl held out her bleeding hands to her. They were glowing as they began to interlock with the celestial designs of the universe. Her blood was gold.
Thena felt a piercing rotten thing begin to rise up in her chest as she looked at the child. How can I possibly protect her now?
Hey, lady, you have to pay for that.
A voice just outside of the memory shattered the feeling that it was real. Thena's eyes cleared of the cloudy haze of the Mahd Wy'ry as her breath suddenly caught in her throat. She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't breathe.
Panic was too gaping, too swollen in her lungs. She shook as she held tightly to the ancient clay poem in her hands. Tears bled down her cheeks as she struggled to find the oxygen that alluded her.
"Uh – you know what, you can, uh, you can have that." The alien dealer told her, backing away from the eternal with the strange glowing marks that danced across her face.
Who—
Who had she been? Where had she been?
Her memories. Where…?
Thena sank to her knees, hugging the tablet to her chest. Crying and sobbing and weeping with all the grief she could no longer keep silent.
Breathe, Thena.
His voice in her head. He still lived inside her head. In her head, he still cooked old and wonderful things. In her head, he still kissed her forehead as she fell asleep against his chest. In her head, he would never die, and she would never let go. She couldn't.
She couldn't breathe and she couldn't let go.
"Thena, you have to breathe." A soft hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was him. It was always him.
With eyes shut tight, she sobbed like vital organs had been ripped from her chest. "Gilgamesh, I can't do this— I can't live without you." She shook her head, refusing to look at the vision of her husband, a man who loved to cook and dance and sing, a man who laughed too loud at his own jokes, the man she had loved for all of forever.
"I don't know how." She sobbed. "How do I live…? How do I…?"
"Thena, it's me." The voice responded, quiet and gentle. It was only then that Thena realized the voice was not his wiry and good-humored one. It wasn't him. Thena's eyes opened. Sersi's eyes looked back at her. Brown and alive and there. Sersi was there.
The younger sister's lips quivered as she looked up at Sersi. Those eyes had been a million things. A war goddess with all the power in the world, a self-satisfied and regal eternal, a lover sweet and in-love, and now, Thena's eyes were merely heartbroken beyond explanation. Sersi gave a little shake of her head as soundless, soulful sympathy embraced her every feature. She said nothing, but her gaze said it all.
"We never should have let you go alone." The enchantress whispered to the war goddess. Her fingers reached and soothingly touched the back of Thena's head. Tender and intimate, her touch was warm and comforting. There was a gentle love in the fingertips of Sersi as if her power could reconfigure the twisted hearts of the heartbroken into wholesome, safe, beating things of beauty and life.
"Did you see that alien's head explode?" A voice behind them questioned. "That was pretty nasty."
Thena turned sharply at the sound of another voice, only to be greeted by the familiar faces of her family. Sprite, who had asked the rather sarcastic question, but also Kingo, Phastos, Makkari. They had searched for her. They had come.
Tears welled in her eyes as she released a sad, wet chuckle. "You're all here."
Phastos stepped forward as he came to Sersi's side, bending down to Thena's level. "You owe me a new table, but there's no way we're lettin' you do this on your own." His large hand came to rest on her shoulder blade as he rubbed the tense, anxious muscles beneath her skin.
"Also, Gil would've probably killed us." Kingo said nervously as he scratched the back of his neck.
Makkari reached for Thena's hand. Her sweet smile was sad, but mighty. Just like always. Hopeful even in the face of wasted despair. "We're family, big sister."
Thena took her hand as she helped her to her feet. She felt shaky as if her knees couldn't hold her weight, but something had been moved from her shoulders. The weight of her all-bearing vengeance did not seem so heavy now. Perhaps it didn't matter as much. Not as much as the relief. Oh, the relief. She was so relieved to see them.
"We'll find Druig, baby sister. I'm— I'm sorry I was so awful to you." She whispered to Makkari. Her voice was raspy from crying.
Makkari shook her head. "None of this." She wrapped her arms tightly around Thena, pulling her big sister against her. Thena let out a choked cry as she buried her face in the crook of Makkari's neck, allowing herself to be held. The other eternals, her siblings and family and friends, all came together, hugging and enfolding Thena in the confounds of their embrace.
1516 – Venice
The young god was kissing a poet when the deviant attacked.
Purple-colored and angry, the monstrous beast rose out of the Venetian canal like a sea dragon. Dripping with salty seawater, its tail burst through the ancient wall of Saint Mark's Basilica, scattering the golden bricks and religious relics across the marble floor. It stood atop the wreckage as a menacing growl poured out of its mouth in a cascade of harsh, angry sound. Pausing in its destruction, the beast sniffed the air for the scent it had been tracking for weeks.
The boy with the eyes of heaven froze in place as the deviant locked eyes on him. The young poet beside him, a youth of no great renown other than for his love poetry, screamed in terror and ran off, abandoning the god to the mercy of the monster.
Served him right, he supposed. It had been centuries since he last saw one. And now, after avoiding these strange sea-fairing beasts, he would die by one.
The deviant lunged into the crowd as people in the basilica's piazza ran off in every direction to take cover. Screams filled the air. The deviant towered above them at nearly ten feet tall. It was easily as tall as the great golden archways that loomed at the entrance of Saint Mark's. Upon spotting the young man, it roared, and began to hurl itself towards him. The claws of the beast gripped at the cobblestone square, tearing massive holes into the medieval walkways.
"I will die today." The god remarked with a saturnine frown. "Unfortunate."
Mere feet from him, the creature suddenly slammed to a stop, hissing and growling and straining against an invisible force. It snapped its jaws as saliva dripped from its massive teeth. Only then did the god notice the glowing rope that was wrapped around the deviant's feet.
And then he saw her.
At six feet tall, the young woman looked like something out of Peter Rubens' Battle of the Amazons. Muscles rippled in her arms as she whipped a glowing rope around the creature's neck, holding it down to her level. The deviant jawed and protested against the force of the woman, but it was no match for her strength.
Power radiated off her as more golden chords of shimmering thread poured from her palms. She wrapped them around pinpoints of the deviant's body, keeping it hoisted to the earth in Lilliputian style. Sculpted arms yanked and pulled against the different threads with expert skill. Like a sailor pulling and working the mast of a great ship in the midst of a hurricane, she crisscrossed ropes of gold interchangeably and tied intricate, complicated knots into the spun threads.
She turned her head in a passing beam of sunlight, and it was only then that the god saw her face. Straining with effort, she hissed at him, "Your sword!" Her words were garbled as she struggled to hold her ropes tied across the massive deviant steady, but the god heard her. He had forgotten he carried a blunt broadsword at his hip.
Tossing it to her, the towering woman released a guttural cry as she plunged the sword into the beast's forehead. The creature dropped limp to the ground as the sword's hilt jutted out of its head. Green sticky blood oozed from its gaping head wound, filling into the cracks of the piazza's cobblestone. It would be months before it washed away entirely.
The woman breathed heavily as she bent down, pressing her hands against her knees in an effort to catch her breath. Her hands were glowing with strange cosmic designs. Marks of the Celestials. The god recognized them instantly. They were the very same he bore on his own skin.
"You saved me." The young man whispered as he stepped closer.
At the sound of his voice, she turned her head. As her sharp green eyes met his, the god realized there was really only one word to describe her: Magnificent.
Her eyes were dizzyingly edgy as if her very gaze could have cut through skin. And despite the terrifying cheekbones that overlorded her face, there was a softness to her cheeks. Cuppable, was the word. He would have liked to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand, if her eyes didn't seem like they would slice his fingers off.
Crowning the top of her head, the woman's scalp was buzzed into an undercut beneath a thick mass of shiny black hair. A warrior-style braid was plaited on the very top of her head, while smaller braids were woven into it.
And under the hot Venetian summer sun, the goddess' skin looked as if it was unwound from it. The woman, with her ocean pink-salt skin, appeared like she had been blended with sands of sunset-kissed shores, while subtle undertones of golden citrine simmered in the chiseled molds of her muscles against the rays of the sun. Sea and sun. A goddess of both water and sky.
The goddess stood to her full height then. Towering and muscular, she was a few inches taller than the young god who stood before her. His eyes flitted up to hers in wonder and attraction.
A small smirk twitched across her expression. "I tend not to make a habit of letting people get eaten."
Knowhere – 2024
"So, you're telling me, that space dweeb who spouted crazy shit about being –" Sprite deepened her voice dramatically in a gravelly, growling tone –"'the last of my kind' and 'Death made out with my mom,' is the Collector?"
"Isn't that what I just said?" Phastos stopped walking to look down at his little sister. He raised a brow as if to ask a secondary, but even snappier question.
"Death made out with his mom?" Kingo cringed. "What does that even look like? How does that even work? I didn't even know Death could make out with people. It's, you know, Death."
Makkari shrugged half-heartedly but gave Kingo one of her assuring 'you're not that crazy' smiles. She patted him on the shoulder as she walked past him. Kingo scowled.
"It depends on what god of death we speak of." Thena stopped to chime in. "I have made out with many of them."
The collective group of eternals stopped along the stony pathway to give their sister a series of bewildered and confused looks.
"You – WHAT?!" Kingo's jaw dropped.
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..?" Phastos crossed his arms with a deeply concerned look growing across his features.
Thena shrugged as she unintentionally tossed her white-golden hair dramatically across her shoulder. "I am the goddess of war; did you think I would not be intimately acquainted with the goddess of death?"
Sersi jutted out her lip and nodded. She was somewhat impressed. "Well, at least she's honest about it."
"Ew." Sprite wrinkled her face in disgust. "Blech."
"Phastos, I'm literally gonna jump off the side of this planet, if we're not there yet." Kingo complained in response to the conversation.
The older eternal gave Kingo a look. "Thank you so much for that, K. That was really helpful in moving things along."
Turning away from the group for a moment, Phastos opened his palm to reveal a shimmering holographic map of Knowhere that glittered just above his fingertips. He spun the circumference of the map, analyzing the strange caves and oblong crevices of the dead Celestial's facial structure. His intuitive dark brown eyes quickly shifted and sifted through the complex layout of the mining colony.
Since Thanos' raid, a lot of Knowhere had been rebuilt in certain places. While many of the old mining sites had been destroyed, new ones had sprouted. A Celestial's carcass was not like other decaying creatures in that the natural process slowly withered away flesh and bone. Celestial bodies did not simply decay, but rather spun out into gases and stars. Massive deposits of energy still lived inside the bones of its hollow body. And because the landscape within Celestials was constantly changing, mining shafts were dangerous, changing with the state of the dying body. Coordinates were even harder to keep track of since they could've changed or disappeared due to the rapid disintegration of the Celestial's bones.
Ikaris could've been in "that" place at some point, but the problem was, because of the changing state of the Celestial, the coordinates may have changed.
"If I'm right, it should be right up there." He observed as he looked up from his map.
The group of eternals looked in the direction where Phastos had gestured. What had once been the Collector's grand and towering trade market of the galaxy's strangest collectibles and space creatures, had now been reduced to a number of broken and empty cages. The abandoned depository was dark and silent. Rusted wreckage loomed in silent masses over the immortal family as they gaped at the sight.
"Creepy." Makkari signed to Sersi as she nodded to the abandoned furnishings.
It looked as if no one had been there for years. Perhaps not since Thanos.
Thena kicked at an empty cannister, which seemed to have housed some form of space goo that had since dried up at the bottom. The cannister rolled down the platform and dropped with a glass-breaking crash on the bottom stair. She was about to move on, but something, just beyond her immortal sight, something in the dark, moved.
The war goddess paused. Eyes sharp. Shoulders tense.
Sprite, beside her, looked up at her older sister. "Thena?" She looked slightly apprehensive. Should she run?
There wasn't any time to react. A humming cosmic spear was suddenly buzzing in Thena's hand as she forcibly shoved Sprite behind her. Without another word, she heaved the spear into the air, aiming for the heart of something terribly close. The golden weapon spiraled through the darkened crevices of the warehouse, lighting its motion in flight.
At the aim of the deadly object, the dark figure danced out of the shadows. A rather high-pitched yelp shrieked into the darkness as the figure emerged. Dirty, grimy, and disgruntled, the once eccentric and rich Collector, Taneleer Tivan, appeared in the fading green light of the old warehouse. He sighed mournfully as he glanced down at the golden spear that jutted out of his tattered cape.
"Haven't I already lost enough?" He bemoaned. He tried to yank Thena's spear from his cape, but he wasn't strong enough to remove such a powerful weapon.
The other eternals, alerted from the commotion, began to walk on over to the sulking figure of the infamous Collector. He sank to the floor of the platform, putting his head in his hands as his fingers dug into his hair. His once fabulous, floofy white hair was now matted and knotted and greasy. "I've lost my collection, I've lost my Carina, I've lost the Stone." He sighed, dejected.
Whereas Sersi may have been compassionate to the crestfallen immortal merchant, Thena was not. She did not have time for whatever existential nonsense this idiot was prattling on about. She snatched the ancient Collector by the shoulder, yanking him to his feet.
"Listen to me, you squalid, little man, I don't care what you've lost because you can always lose more."
"Thena." Sersi softly called to her sister from behind. Stepping forward, she gently touched Thena's shoulder. "We need him, remember?"
Thena rolled her eyes. With a groan, she dropped the weeping Tivan to the floor. "Tell us where Ikaris is." She snapped as she looked down at the lamenting alien. "Or I'll kill you."
"Thena!" Phastos scolded.
"I'll slightly kill you." Thena corrected.
Tivan pulled himself up. He was still sniveling and whimpering at the war goddess' force, but his frustration was beginning to crack down the side of his face. "As much as I would have loved to have an eternal in my collection. As you can see," he sarcastically gestured to the burned-out wreckage behind him, "I don't really have the means anymore."
"Was he here?" Makkari asked, which Sersi translated for Tivan.
"He won't have the answers you're looking for." A voice behind them spoke.
All six sets of the eternals' eyes shifted to the figure.
There, in a beam of green gaseous light, a tall, strikingly beautiful woman with emerald-green skin leaned against a rack of old cages. She was polishing a long dangerous-looking sword (which, had a suspicious gooey substance along the blade) on the knee of her ripped leather pants. At their attention, she glanced up. Strange, but lovely violet eyes sharply took in the group of immortal creatures before her. They used to call her the fiercest woman in the galaxy, but even she wasn't sure about the woman with the glowing spear sticking out Tivan's cape.
"You know Ikaris?" Sersi asked with more emotion than she intended.
"I didn't know him, but I knew he was an eternal. And besides, it's hard to miss a jawline like that." The woman with the peppermint-green lips smirked. "I do know he was looking for something." She sheathed the massive sword to a wrap on the back of her leather halter top and sauntered forward. Her thigh-high leather boots, heeled and deadly, clacked against the grated surface of the raised walkway.
How is she not getting her heels stuck? Sprite thought as she frowned at the woman's boots.
"Mentioned something about a machine or something." The woman had finally come close enough that she was standing slightly above them from the raised platform. She crossed her arms in a very no-nonsense demeanor.
"A machine or something?" Phastos raised a rather judgmental eyebrow at the space woman's use of descriptive adjectives (or lack thereof). "That was really descriptive."
"I don't know, okay? I just know he looked bad. Ragged. Like he hadn't shaved."
Kingo and Phastos, both bearing a bit of a five o'clock shadow, regarded themselves with an uncomfortable side eye.
"He was in the markets – asking around for a machine of some kind. He stops in the middle of this crowd, starts screaming like someone is cutting off his face, and then, disappears in a flash of light. Pretty dramatic exit, if you ask me."
Sersi let out a hot worried exhale. She hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath. I'm sorry. He had told her. Tears brimmed in his big, luminous, starry eyes. The torment on his face, the emotion, the heartache, the realization. I know. She had answered. It was all she could say. She couldn't stop him, she couldn't change him. There was no stopping Ikaris. Even he knew that.
And then he was gone.
Except he wasn't. He had been here, on this planet. Looking for something.
"The same thing happened to Druig." Makkari grabbed Kingo's shoulder, shaking him. "That's what happened to Druig!" Her eyes were wild. Could the same thing have happened to Ikaris?
Ignoring her little sister, Thena cut in front of her siblings. Her eyes leveled with the green-skinned warrior above her. To anyone else, she would've been intimidating, but Thena had practically invented the idea of intimidation. She hardly batted an eye. "Who are you?" Thena demanded. "And why should we trust you?"
Kingo, who hadn't said anything the entire time, could not stop staring at the outrageously gorgeous green lady, adorned with an endless supply of leather clothing and sharp, stabby weapons. He cleared his throat. "Yeahhhh, you should tell us your name – and, you know, if you want, like, your number, too."
The woman raised a dark eyebrow at Kingo, while the rest of his siblings glanced at him.
"For business purposes! Obviously! C'mon, guys." He scoffed and shook his head. "You people just do not understand networking."
"Gamora." The woman said in response to Thena's question. "Daughter of Thanos. And you should probably trust me because I think I know where to look for your friend."
1518 – Venice
"Tell me something precious, Ariadne." The god said to her after a long silence.
They sat in the moonlight on a lonely dock near the busy San Marco basin. A short distance away, massive trading ships from all over the world were docking along the crowded dry docks. Sailors and shipmen, shouting and cursing in half-heard phrases of Venetian, dialects of Southern Italian, and French, rushed on-and-off those colossal sea-bearing beasts. Working in tandem, they threw large packages containing tea, sugar, and fabric across the seaboard to the waiting wagons and pulleys.
Despite the night sky, the torches along the docks burned brightly, allowing the mariners to busily unload the parcels of goods from the distant countries of the Eastern World. Spices from Istanbul, tea and silk from China, furs from Russia. Venice was the epicenter of the Western World in 1518. All the wealth in the world was funneled here in this flooded city of artists, seaman, and romantics. The start of the Western Renaissance began in Venice as some of the greatest poets would be born here.
In fact, a young monk by the name of Matteo Bandello, visiting Venice then in 1518, bemoaning the loss of his youth in his mid-thirties, and heartbroken by an illicit affair he had with a young baron, would compose one of the most harrowing love stories in all of Western literature: La Tragedia di Romeo e Giulietta. Later, as a young English playwright would compose it, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
Perhaps that is what drew Ariadne, the eternally mid-twenties, two-thousand-year-old goddess, to the center of this sinking city. Its wealth was a benefit, but the stories that were bred within its medieval walls were addictive to someone with thousands of stories, but none of them her own.
"Precious?" Ariadne frowned at the wording. A small, amused smile pulled at the edges of her lips.
"Ah," the god chuckled with his smile finely upturning across his lips, "you misunderstand. 'Precious' is not always something fragile, but something that is beholden within ourselves. A burden or a wish. A curse or a ceremony. The thing that we protect beyond all else." His eyes focused in on the side of her face.
The goddess cocked her head as a sharp raise of her brow enfolded over her gaze. "And why would I tell you something like that?" Her amused smile remained, but a bemused expression had begun to cross her features. She was listening, despite her better judgment.
"Because I will tell you mine." The young god offered.
Ariadne's smile grew. "Go on, then. I'll see if your story is a worthy trade for mine."
The young god's sharp smile began to dim. His face grew contemplative, serious. "When I was young, I believed everyone in the world was in love with me."
At his words, the goddess snorted, a poor attempt to keep her laughter contained. She looked away from his face. If she met his gaze, she knew she would lose any semblance of self-control.
"Laughter – really? When I'm trying to confess my all-begotten truth?" He shook his head, but it was clear he was unable to keep the smile from forming across his face.
"Honestly, though, you can't expect me not to." She turned her face to meet his gaze. Their eyes met for a moment as something in his quick and beautiful expression softened under her amusement. He was clay in the sharp gaze of her eyes. Soft and warm and moldable. He wished she would always look at him like that. "You still think everyone in the world is in love with you."
A chuckle escaped his lips. "I know they are." His gaze diverted from hers as he glanced at his leather boots, which dangled over the edge of the dock. A mournful sort of notion seemed to be taking hold of his face. "The tragedy is, Ariadne, I believed them. I believed that they loved me for who I was. How could I not? I thought I was beautiful, perfect, the sun upon my face, as all unholy favor fell upon me." He paused as he shifted his gaze to the distant sea. The Adriatic simmered calmly out beyond the dark horizon as a lonely vessel began the long journey Eastward.
"But as their worship increased, I began to realize the humans of this world never loved me. They loved what I was for my beauty, my charms, but the notion began to occur to me that I had never been in love. I had played the lover, winged and flourished in their eyes, but I—" A deep frown knitted across the molds of his overwhelmingly beautiful face. "I had spent so long as the lover, that I didn't know who I was. Not really. Not ever."
Once more, his eyes flitted to hers. Blue as impossible jewels pulled from midnight clouds, they burrowed into hers. "You make me uneasy, Ariadne." His words were a purr as he whispered her name. He touched her hand, fingertips ghosting over her skin. "I feel as if I am a ghost in your presence, struggling to become flesh. You do as no one has," he shifted his weight so their legs rested up against one another, "you humble me."
Ariadne's breath hitched in her throat at his words. Despite her power in form and strength, the young eternal felt small when he looked at her. She felt flush rise to her cheekbones. Their faces were breathless inches away from one another. "Eros." She hesitated with eyes unable to move from his.
"I have loved no one until you." The god of love told her with words that felt like milk and honey poured down her ears. His hand cupped her face, thumb resting on the bones of her high holy cheekbone.
There, in the moonlight of that ancient, winding city of stories and myth, the god of love kissed the girl with the golden string.
Later that same evening, Eros slept beside her. His breathing was slow and deep and even, while a lean, sculpted arm lay braced behind his head. Behind softly closed eyelashes, his eyes shifted and danced as he dreamed. When she lay beside him like this, a thigh draped over his torso, and her arm propped up against his chest, Ariadne would find herself looking up into the face of that young alluring god. And instead of curving lips and smoldering gazes, she would only find the face of a boy, asleep and dreaming. She was reminded that he wasn't all finely crafted edges and dangerous eyes. The god of love was soft, too. Sweet. He dreamed just like everyone else.
Ariadne's fingertips danced across his chest, tracing the muscles that shifted and moved with his breathing. Lines of worry began to sprout across her forehead as she realized, quite tragically, Eros was not the only one who had never been in love.
Her whole life, over two-thousand-years and counting, had been defined by an immortal family. Storied and known and beloved in every culture, country, and continent. And as old as she was, as goddamn ancient as she was, her family had lived for thousands of years before she had even existed. It is hard to imagine the conception of time for unageing, unliving creatures like them. Except, Ariadne had aged.
Until she stopped.
She stopped aging completely at the age that humans considered twenty-seven. A terrible age to be stuck at, really. Right at the cusp of thirty. Stagnant at the edge of one decade, unable to cross to the other. She hadn't minded it when she was younger – happy to be young and immortal and forever.
One day, however, she realized she would never be twenty-eight. Or at least, she would never age into some dimension where she was twenty-eight. And this fact, this simple and obvious and terrible truth, crushed her.
Not to mention, her entire family didn't know what to make of her. Ikaris, despite his serious, but careful mentoring, was suspicious of the secret knowledge that was stored inside her head. Sprite began to viscerally despise Ariadne right around the same time she went through puberty. Her mother and father were far too protective, and even though she had proven her might and power and strength, it didn't matter.
Try being two-thousand-years-old and still treated like a child. Old enough to have met Socrates, but not valid enough to matter in the eyes of her stubbornly protective family.
When the other eternals left Venice about a century ago to move onto South America, Ariadne decided to stay. She had never been on her own, she had never lived her own life, and she had never been in love. Venice was the first place, in all her time wandering this earth with her family, that felt like belonged to her. So much history and art and culture. She wanted roots here. She wanted to mean something here. And the Venetians, white and rich and arrogant of their primeval wealth, worshipped the young goddess, the woman they dubbed the "Lion of Venice."
Like the ancient bronze sculpture of the winged lion that growled menacingly over the Piazza San Marco, Ariadne was the defender of the city. She brought down lingering deviants, warded off invaders, and crushed the city's enemies. It also helped that she had inherited a fraction of her father's mighty strength, while her mother's teachings of strategy and combat taught her to control her power.
She came to love her life in that city. Worshipped and treasured and laureled, she felt important. But being so beloved was only fun for Ariadne in the moment, and then afterwards, she realized she was alone once again. And, unfortunately, that was when Ariadne discovered an emotion she had always felt, but never known the name of: Loneliness.
After all that separation and independence and glorious freedom, she was still alone.
It wasn't that Ariadne wasn't attracted to people. She was. Plenty of times. Too many times. Okay, all the time. But she was over two-thousand-years-old.
How do you…do things?
How do you do anything?
You don't.
You wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Ariadne frowned at the memory of the tight, dark feeling that welled in her chest. Loneliness was often so painful because it was accompanied by hope. The wait has to end sometime, right? Only to be reminded that, sometimes, it didn't. Sometimes waiting never ended.
I'll wait into eternity for nothing.
Ikaris had scolded her when she was young for being so wistful over something so ephemeral. We're eternals, Ariadne, he had once told her, we have a mission. We don't get to fall in love. This was the same man, of course, who had been in love with one woman since the very moment he opened his eyes and saw her, aboard a starship in the middle of space, a million years ago.
"Kopreíos." Ariadne whispered to herself in the sleeping darkness of Eros' bed chamber. Full of shit. Ikaris was, her family was, they all were. Most of them had come to this planet with the person they loved. What about the rest of them? What about her?
Tears blurred her vision as she stared up at the ceiling. What about her? I have loved no one until you. Her eyes shifted to the young god who slept beside her. Ikaris had been wrong. He loved her.
"God told me a secret when I was small." She said aloud with emotion shivering in her words. Her heart pounded in her chest as she swallowed back her fear.
At the sound of her voice, Eros' eyes shifted open. Half-asleep and drowsy, he tried to focus in on her words. "Ariadne?" He asked as he propped himself up. "What…?" His puffy, sleepy eyes shifted to the center of her face. Upon realizing she was on the verge of tears, his features sharply shifted into place. Concern threaded itself across his face like the magical golden threads that came from Ariadne's hands.
"What is it, love?" His arm, wrapped around her shoulders, tightened as he pulled her closer.
"Something precious." She said softly. Vulnerability blossomed across her face as she shifted her watery green eyes to his. "When I was a child, Arishem gave me a map of the universe. Not just a map of the stars or the planets or the galaxy, but a map to him."
Eros' eyes widened. "He gave you a map? To a place? On parchment?"
Ariadne shook her head. "It's not that simple. It… It's not a physical map that's charted, or a map that you can write down. It's a map that moves. It changes, it grows, it expands with the universe. And it's all in my head." She admitted with emotion clinging to her words. She grew soft-spoken, while her eyes flitted away from Eros'. "The map to god is in my head."
The young man watched the woman beside him with deepening concern. His blue eyes darted across her face as if he could catch the minute changes of her expression. A tiny smile began to pull at his features, but his heavy, serious gaze stayed on her. The smile was purely for her, not for him. "Well, that has to have led to a headache or two."
With a choked chuckle, she nodded against the pillow. Her face was straining with effort, just as the day he first saw her, but not because of physical exertion or movement. Her face was tight with lines of worry, of fear. She was afraid.
"Darlin'," he shook his head as he pressed her hand against his lips. "You've got nothing to fear with me."
"You don't understand, Eros." She pulled away, pulling herself up into an upright position. The sheets dropped away from her chest, exposing the skin and curves of her breasts. Her hair was mussed and undone from its dangerous braid and had been shoved to one side of her scalp. Turning her head over her shoulder, her eyes snapped back to meet his gaze. "I'm not just telling you I love you. I'm risking everything and I'm telling you who I am. I'm giving you a secret that no one in the whole world knows." She cried with sharp, heartbroken emphasis.
Eros wanted to reply with something assuring or flattering or quippy, but he couldn't do any of that. All he could see was the woman before him, shaking, as words that she had clung to and hugged and protected fell from her lips. Her face was awash with white-cold terror in being so vulnerable. And she was shaking. She was cold, and scared, and shaking.
"Ari." He shook his head. Heartbreak ripped across his expression. Features shifted and split and moved with his emotion. "Ariadne…" He whispered her name again. Tears, for the first time in centuries, bobbed up into the banks of his eyelashes. He took her face in between his hands, her eyes met his, and some terrible truth was revealed to him. A knot that he could not untie. A thing he had long protected. A door opening at the end of the expanding, elongating universe. His stupidly long life became so much more interesting in that moment, when his eyes met hers.
Something precious came from his lips.
"I have loved no one until you."
The young woman released a shaky breath at his words. In between his hands, she nodded. Assured. Promised. Loved. All that she had ever waited for.
Eros' hands dropped from her face as they crumpled to his lap. His eyes shifted from hers to his fingers. "Thank you for telling me." He whispered. Tears still slept in his eyes, prickling and poking and welling up in his vision.
She nodded, and as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders, Ariadne shifted herself back onto the bed. Her head came to rest in his lap, while his fingertips shifted and massaged through her hair. A tear still rested on her cheek. His thumb caught it before it could escape.
"Is that why you really left your family?" He asked.
"My whole life was defined by what was inside my head. Not by who I was." Her eyes glanced off into the darkness of the room. Eros could see their movement in the light of the moon as glints of light bounced off her green eyes like sparks. "I wanted to be more than a map and a secret."
With a sigh, he leaned back into the mass of pillows that were propped behind him. He cleared his throat. "You should go; make amends with them." His gaze had become stilled, distant as he looked out the window of the bedroom. In a few hours, Venice would begin to awaken as dawn approached.
Stiffening against his touch, she turned in his lap. Her eyes shot up to meet his. "Why?"
A chuckle escaped his lips at her suspicion. "They were just trying to protect you."
Rolling her eyes, Ariadne shifted herself back into a comfortable position. "Or smother me."
"Perhaps there isn't a difference when it comes to the precious things in our lives." Eros offered. "They love you, Ari – that means something."
Ariadne swallowed as she stretched her arm around Eros' torso. His words, despite how much she hated to admit, made sense. It had been nearly a century since she had seen her parents. She owed it to her family (and perhaps to herself) to make the proper apologies. Her eyes shifted to the ceiling. "What about us? I can't just leave."
"We live forever, my love." His smile grew, but something in his eyes had moved out of the way. Something had grown older, or something had withered. But all the same, his gaze had changed. "I'll wait for you as long as you'll have me. When you're ready, we'll meet back in Venice."
The goddess' face softened as she met Eros' gaze. She didn't notice the change in his eyes. Her hand reached up to cup the back of his head as she pulled his face down to hers. In the quiet darkness, his lips enfolded against hers as they shared a kiss in the light of the moon.
Tenochtitlan – 1521
The smoke of the battle made it hard to see, but the sun had begun to set over the towering Aztec pyramids in the distance. From her spot in the thick, humid jungle, Ariadne could see the disappearing sun through the cracks of the trees. It would be dark soon, and when night came, the violence of the Spanish conquest would only escalate.
Unfortunately, the deviants were there, too.
There was a resounding roar as the great beast before them screeched into the smoky, foul-smelling sky. The trees around them shook with the powerful sound as the deviant, shaped like a cross between a lion and a bird of prey, pawed at the ground. It wasn't nearly as big as some of them they had faced, but it could fly and had a jawful of sharp, pointy teeth.
So, you know, either way, it was pretty bad.
Thena's hand opened as the spiral designs of Celestial energy began to morph into a deadly weapon that was jagged, hacked, and long. A lethal hybrid cross between a sword and a spear. It hummed with deadly energy as she spun it between her fingers. Getting her grip on the weapon, she went running towards the deviant. With golden hair flying out behind her, white skirts twirling in deadly arcs of motion, her feet danced across the Earth with ethereal, unstoppable grace.
With a soft grunt, she flung herself into a soaring somersault, landing right on top of the screeching beast. Her jagged weapon struck directly into the creature's eye. Green viscousy blood from the deviant splattered across her leg as she clung to the back of it.
The creature roared as it fought to knock Thena off. It wriggled and shook its backside, dangerously spinning into a grove of trees. Any closer to the Aztec city and the humans would be harmed.
"Ariadne!" Her mother yelled. "Now!"
The young eternal sprang into action as she darted out from the trees. Glowing ropes poured from her hands as she began to wrap them around the neck of the deviant. They stretched and tightened and knotted as if by their own accord, and being unbreakably spun from the Celestial power that flowed through Ariadne's veins, it was almost certain they were.
Ariadne dug her heels into the Amazon's soft soil as she began to wrangle in the deviant. Gritting her teeth, she groaned with all her almighty strength as she began to pull the creature towards her. It moaned and protested, snapping at the golden chords that held it in place.
Twisting the ropes into a dangerous game of cat's cradle, she held them tight to her chest. Sweat dripped down the side of her face. Her muscles bulged as every movement she took was made in condemning struggle.
"Dad," she grunted. "Any time you wanna cut in." She heaved through a jumbled mouthful of Ancient Greek.
Gilgamesh came from behind, golden fists glowing with thick, colossal power. He hurled his fist into the side of the beast with quaking force. The earth beneath Ariadne's feet shook and Thena clamped onto her golden weapon to keep steady from above.
The deviant moaned as it dropped to its side, where it shortly attempted to get up a second time. Working in tandem, while Ariadne snapped her ropes (effectively wrapping them tighter around the creature), Thena yanked the golden spear-sword weapon out of the deviant and plunged it through the top of its jaw. Gilgamesh finished the mother-daughter combo off with a strike to the monster's backside, effectively shoving it right down into a nearby ditch.
With a graceful leap from the back of the tumbling deviant, Thena launched herself into the waiting arms of Gilgamesh. He caught her with a sweet smile appearing on his face. "Hi, beautiful." Thena rolled her eyes at his comment but, as always, found herself unable to fight the smile that inevitably appeared because of his stupidly cute face.
Ariadne reeled the golden ropes back into her hands as she rolled her cramped shoulder back into place. She wiped the sweat from her brow as she turned to her father. "You took your time with that one, old man." She joked with a teasing smile.
"Who you callin' old?" Her father scowled as he set her mother down gently on the ground.
Thena snickered at the exchange between the two. "She may have point, Gil. I thought I saw some grey hair on you the other day."
Gilgamesh snorted. "I'd take it. I'd look good in salt-and-pepper." He ran his hand through his hair, raking it up into a wayward mess of sticky directions.
The war goddess raised an eyebrow as a suggestive little smile played at her lips. "You're right. You would."
Araidne's face contorted into abject horror. "Oh, my God. Please stop."
Her parents both began to laugh at their daughter's expression. Gilgamesh tugged at Ariadne's braid affectionately, while Thena came around the other side to squeeze her shoulder.
"Oh, you know you love us, agaya." Her father grinned at her with a big, toothy smile. He stuck an arm around her shoulders, giving her a tight squeeze, much to his daughter's reluctance.
Ariadne, rolling her eyes dramatically, crossed her arms and gave her father a look. "Sometimes." But a warm smile began to tug itself into place across her lips. She would be lying if she said she hadn't missed them.
Thena nodded to the distant sounds of war. A particularly loud pop! sounded behind them as guns began firing off into the dark trees. The Spanish were surrounding the Aztec city, spreading out on both sides. "We need to get on, then. Ajak'll be expecting us. We have to leave soon."
Releasing his daughter, Gilgamesh closed the distance between him and his wife, taking Thena's hand in his. He squeezed her pale, white fingers with a small smile, before he turned back to his kid. "Ariadne, you comin'?"
"Yeah – I'll catch up. I'm going make sure Sprite and Ikaris made it out okay with those other deviants." She jerked her head back towards the chaos behind them of flames, smoke, and battle.
Thena frowned. Something in her gut felt… She felt a clenching, an unnatural sort of tightening like the coils of a python as it lethally squeezed around its prey. Something felt scattered. Something… Something was wrong. "Ariadne—"
"Mamá." The younger eternal warned. The thick Greek accent she had carried since she was a child was emphasized in her anger. Green eyes, a gift from her mother, glowered back at the legendary war goddess. Just as she thought her parents had begun to see her as more than a child, her mother decided to patronize her.
"No—Ariadne, it's…" Her eyes searched her daughter's face frantically. Something… Something was wrong. "You can't go." She whispered softly, as if she couldn't afford to speak any louder. Thena was a goddess – she never whispered. Not if she could help it.
No, she had had it wrong. It wasn't a tightening in her gut. It was a loosening. Something was unraveling inside of her. Something was coming undone. The parts of her were becoming loose, greasy. She couldn't…
The young goddess raised her head. A magnificent expression of rage blossomed across her face. Her features became sharp and dangerously defined in the flickering, orange light of the flames. An egregious, unspeakable thing rested right on the tip of her tongue, but as her gaze flickered from her mother to her father, it was the little shake of his head that stopped her. Don't. Holding his soft eyes, the beautiful angular ones that looked so much like her own, she stopped herself.
With a conceding sigh, Ariadne nodded to her father. "I'll be back." With a sharp turn of her heel, she walked off into the dark underbrush of the jungle.
According to Phastos, Sprite and Ikaris had been on the eastern side of the jungle. A massive deviant had run off in this direction. Sprite usually accompanied Ikaris so that she could visually manipulate the eyes of the beast, while Ikaris struck from above with the cosmic beams of his gaze. They made a good team, despite Sprite's sour attitude and Ikaris' stubborn leadership.
Slinking through a pair of thick trees, Ariadne came to a clearing where the blood-red sunset hung above her in full-view. She paused to look up at the crimson sky. There were pale streaks of orange that lined beneath the dark red clouds, but very few. Something is behind that sky, she thought. A warning, lurking behind the blackening clouds of smoke, red sky, and gleaming stars. If she had been a child, she would have sketched it across the rich, white-sand shores of Naxos.
Perhaps her mother had been right, perhaps she shouldn't have come.
"Ariadne?" It was his voice. She'd forgotten how the sweet, lulling cadence hummed in the air like poetry.
"Eros?!" She turned to look at him. A smile began to toy with the line of her lips before carnal concern took over. Eros couldn't fight. Not like her. Not like her parents. "You can't be here. It's not safe." She came to him, grabbing hold of his hand. "You have to go back."
Eros stepped out of the shadows and into the dying sun's red hues as he closed the gap between them. In the light, his skin looked as if it was awash with dried blood. His face was pale and sallow. Judging from the dark purple circles beneath his eyes, it looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks. He was looking at her with a swimming, pained gaze. "Ariadne, I—" He began, but stopped as his eyes flicked nervously behind them.
Her eyes sought the young god's. Why was he acting strange? Was he hurt? She gently reached for him. All she wanted to do was hold him close, to bury her face in his neck, to smell the scent of his sweet skin. "I thought we were going to meet in—"
"Ariadne," he snapped as his attention refocused back onto her. He grabbed hold of her shoulders with his thumb pressing tightly against her collarbone. A tortured, gnarled expression twisted across his face. "You have to run." He growled darkly. Tears were glittering in his star-crossed eyes.
Her face fell. "What are you talking about?" She asked in her native Greek. Confused and hurt, the young goddess backed a step away from him.
"Oh, I see. You thought you would warn her." A dark, deep voice greeted her from behind. "That's new."
Ariadne's head snapped around at the sound of the other voice. Moving her head back to adjust her view, her eyes shifted upwards to a colossal giant that towered above her. His pale purple face stared back at her with a menacing grin. His jaw was a mass of wrinkles and lines, while his elongated face reminded her of a deviant. A menace from deep space.
Is that what he was? A deviant with the ability to speak?
Instinctively, the goddess spun into motion as golden ropes snapped out of her hands and around the giant's ankles and wrists. She pulled them taut as she glided backwards, pulling and twisting on the unbreakable threads. Still bewildered and unsure as to what was going on, her head felt hazy and unfocused. What is this? Despite her confusion, she stood tall and braced herself for yet another battle of wills. She was an eternal, and if this giant was some kind of deviant, then she knew how to kill it. After all, her mother, the goddess of war, had taught her how to fight.
Trust your instincts, Ariadne, for they will save your life.
The giant tripped over the ropes, falling to his knees with a heavy thud. With his wrists bound and his legs crossed, he couldn't move. At her quick and violent motions, the giant began to shake with humorless, spiraling laughter.
"Ah, I see why you like her." He spoke to Eros as he lifted his face to meet Ariadne's eyes.
Ariadne breathed heavily as she glanced back at Eros. "Who is he?" She asked the young god, the one who had once greeted her with golden smiles and poetry in every word.
Eros grimly regarded Ariadne. He had backed away from the two of them. He parted his lips as if to speak, but the giant beat him to it.
"Don't you see the resemblance?" The giant chuckled darkly.
Ariadne's face whipped back to meet the merciless eyes of the purple giant. A knot of dread began to painfully tangle her insides up. Intestines twisting, contorting, innards tightening and clenching, her chest felt brittle and breakable. Air was scarce. No. Her eyes slowly swept back to Eros' as realization began to dawn on her. Slow, solemn tears were falling down his cheeks, but his eyes, permanently glued to the sky above like a penitent beggar asking for relief, avoided the searching gaze of her own. When I was young, I believed everyone in the world was in love with me.
Because everyone always, always is.
Eros was the god of love.
No.
No.
"I'm his older brother. Thanos. And he led me to you."
As if caught in a dream, the goddess blindly turned to face giant. The giant named Thanos. His smile was too sharp. It cut into the blurring edges of her vision. She couldn't tell if she was crying or simply losing her grip on reality. Her breath was knocked from her lungs. What? She may have spoken it aloud, but she wasn't sure. She couldn't remember.
For a fraction of a moment, an unnoticed millisecond, in her distraction and distress, she loosened her hold on the glimmering golden knots wrapped around her fingers.
And though it may have been the tiniest of changes, a mere switch in the tension, the giant felt it.
They both did.
His eyes shifted to hers as they both recognized what was about to happen, but Ariadne had realized it a moment too late.
"No." She whispered in one last breath.
Thanos' hands wrapped around the loose golden rope and yanked it forward. He pulled it taut, knocking Ariadne off of her feet as she collapsed to the forest floor. Roping it around his fingers as if the legendary golden thread was merely a snag of in a woolen garment, he snapped it in half.
Ariadne screamed in agony as she fell to her knees. She gripped her glowing hand against her chest as her power was violently ripped out of her flesh. Tears blurred her vision as her expression twisted and crumpled and howled with enraged pain. The goddess had been bitten by deviants, stabbed by angry invading soldiers, grabbed too quickly by men who thought they were stronger than her. But none of that – none of it felt like this.
Before she could even think to launch another attack, Thanos grabbed Ariadne from the ground, by the throat, and lifted her high into the dripping bloody sky.
"I'm sorry, little one." Thanos told her as she dug and clawed at the massive hand around her neck. Her nails scratched and tore and wrenched at his massive fingers, but nothing worked. He was stronger than her on every level. "But I need the map inside of you more than I care for your comfort."
At his admission, Ariadne let out a strangled cry at his words. Unable to breathe, unable to speak, her eyes sought for Eros'. The only person who could have known. The one she had waited for. The one she had dreamed of. The one she had imagined in her head.
The only person she had loved.
Untold, unspeakable betrayal flashed in her eyes. "I have loved no one until you?" She scarcely whispered with tears flooding down her cheeks. Her voice was raspy and hoarse as Thanos' grip cut into her vocal chords.
The god was standing beside his brother now. His expression was morphed by epic tragedy. "I'm sorry." He whispered to her as more tears threatened to fall from his own eyes.
Thanos regarded his brother's words, before he turned back to the woman he held in his hand. "He tried to warn you and he apologized? Hmmm. He probably really did love you, but he loved his own life more."
If you are Ariadne,
where is Theseus?