Time suspended itself.
Cathy experienced no awareness of its passing, and truly, she wasn't in the right frame of mind to notice. Whether Maxie was still wiping glistening blood from his cattle prod, or if a delicate dress of cobwebs had already draped Cathy's body, she wished never to leave her bedroom. She only wanted to banish every emotion, any and all semblance that made her human, because being human right then was the worst thing for her to be. She wanted to barrel like a charging rhino, brace her shoulder for impact, and shatter through the only window in the room, only out of desperation to be free.
Nothing was working to remove the brutally soldered image of Hephaestus's demise out of her mind. It stayed like a fresh tattoo, still stinging, blazingly colorful, and ever permanent. Her anguish was crippling, her confusion was disorienting, and worst of all, her stony grip on her sanity was slipping.
There was little reason to doubt now. Inside Maxie lived a raging potential to murder her, too, and he would have already done so at their first introduction had it not been for Cathy's last minute swipe of a matchbook from her sidetable and Phil bestowing a humble blanket out of kindness.
That hardly excused Hephaestus. That convict would have kidnapped her and sold her. But he was the mortal monster, the simplistic, straightforward one with a human drive. Maxie was the enduring monster, full of inpredictability, and designed with an immortality complex that would extend to his legacy. He was what legends were created from.
Her cheeks were cold. She brought two fingers to her soft flesh, dismally surprised when she pulled away moisture on her fingertips. She'd been crying and hadn't even known it. Hurriedly, she rubbed her fingers together to rid them of the evidence and dragged her thumb underneath each eye, wiping her face as dry as she could possibly attempt. Nobody was supposed to see her like this. That didn't mean she was embarrassed to have anyone see her fall apart, to see her vulnerable; nobody was supposed to see her like this, because Hestia was supposed to be on Zeus's side. Hephaestus deserved his fate according to his murderer, and Cathy was not allowed to deviate or think for herself on the matter. If Maxie intended to visit, she knew she'd have to explain why she looked so upset, and right now she couldn't muster the spark of energy or brain power to think of a lie.
A soft knock pattered at her back.
Startled, she shot a look to the doorknob above her, on high alert to see if it turned. It didn't.
Maybe if she was silent her visitor wouldn't know she was there...
A pocket of silence followed. Just when Cathy felt she could relax, the knock came again.
"Hestia?" said a muffled, gentle voice. Male. Dionysus. "Are you in there?"
Cathy swept away more tears, dragging her fingertips under her eyes. Even someone as potentially harmless as Dionysus couldn't convince her to quit blocking the door. A buzz was crawling through her bones, a floaty one that made her feel like she'd lose her grip on balance if she stood.
Dionysus was left answerless.
A smart, open-palm slap on the door sent vibrations against Cathy's back.
"Hestia? We know you are in there. Open up."
An unwelcome chill ran through Cathy's shoulders. That wasn't Dionysus this time, it was Calliope. And while the woman didn't shout, the demand to let them enter was not to go unheeded.
Cathy didn't want to invite anybody in. By every meaning of the phrase. There was no inkling, no spirit left in her to interact. Nevertheless, after dragging her arm under her nose for one final attempt at holding herself together, Cathy manufactured a smear of temporary willpower. She leaned sidelong and, wobblingly, raised herself to her feet. Faintly as she possibly could, she cleared her globby throat in order to speak clearly. She wasn't sure how well she could hide her condition. "Yes I'm here," she said, monotone.
The glint off the knob shifted and the door creaked open. Dionysus peeked his head in first, respectful but morose. Their eyes met and at once Dionysus's face crinkled in sympathy, letting Cathy know full well that she wasn't fooling anyone. He pushed the door further, and Calliope merged into view, her sharp eyes honing in on Cathy, telegraphing a demand for an explanation.
"I-I..." What Cathy meant to say was, I can explain, Hephaestus attacked me, he was going to drag me back out there, he was going to sell me off.
"What were you doing down there?! What happened?" snapped Calliope.
Cathy's breath shuddered as she exhaled. "I-I just wanted to-"
"We all know the guy was scum, but someone just died because of you. Tell me what happened." She strode into the room purposefully, with Dionysus behind.
"Calliope, let us be reasonable..." he said in an attempt to soothe his colleague's building temper. He closed the door silently behind him.
Calliope placed a hand on her hip, raked her fingers through her brown hair, and paced over the rug in front of the fireplace. "That's three, Dionysus! Three now," she muttered. A geyser of frustration was bubbling in the woman's gut, Cathy just knew it.
"I know, I know," Dionysus contended, sounding like he was on the verge of some emotional cliff too, the edge within sight. But he kept whatever upheaval he was feeling at bay.
Cathy was finding it increasingly difficult to stand during the exchange. A numbing sensation was crippling her legs, traveling up through her thigh bones. As inconspicuously as she could, she leaned against the wall beside the door frame and lowered herself to the floor, hugging her arms over her chest.
"I knew we should have kept a closer watch on that...that animal," muttered Calliope.
"There's nothing we can do about it now, Calliope," said Dionysus.
Calliope was about to reply when she spotted Cathy on the floor. "Get up. Hold yourself together," she said sternly. The demand only made Cathy's gasping worse.
Dionysus leaned between the two, blocking Calliope from view. "You should eat something," he said kindly down to Cathy to offset the tension. He was clearly trying his best to ease the strain. "Dinner's ready."
Cathy shook her head. She felt like she'd never eat again. She felt like she could never do anything again without seeing the lightning rod piercing Hephaestus's vulnerable flesh, the ring of blood expanding from the entry point, the fading eyes...
And then there was the horrible feeling in her gut where she was glad he was gone, something nobody had ever made her feel before. For she had never hated no one as much. All of it was terrible and confusing.
Calliope crossed her arms and drummed her fingers impatiently over her elbow. "We won't be able to excuse you from the dinner table. Maxie's expecting a celebration, everybody needs to be present," she said bluntly, a prompt for Cathy to pull herself together soon.
Cathy barely heard. She enclosed her knees tight, looking across the room in a thousand-yard stare. A lone tear left behind jagged down her cheek, falling into the trails shaped by the ones before.
Dionysus lowered onto his knees to be eye-level with her. "Don't cry now, child. It will be okay. We'll survive this. We just need to work together." He held Cathy's face in his hands like a grandfather assuring her that there were no monsters under the bed. "Just play your part, you'll be fine, understand? Just play your part." Although he meant well, the furrowing of his brow gave away his fears. The odds of every person present in that room surviving their ordeal seemed to dim with every passing day as Maxie spiraled deeper and deeper into the labyrinths of of his addled mind.
Calliope was frowning now, eyeing Dionysus. She clearly disapproved of his coddling. But she said nothing.
Cathy told them everything inbetween lapses where her tears were threatening to gather again. Everything leading up to the exchange between her and Hephaestus, before the rescue brigade, charged by Maxie, arrived.
They ate dinner in silence. Cathy felt cold, and it had nothing to do with proximity to the fireplace. Phil's brown blanket was laying across her shoulders, but it wasn't enough.
She flashed a brief glance across the table at Hephaestus's spot, where he was always parallel to her. Without his blazing orange jumpsuit, the dining chamber's color scheme settled to a more neutral, evened-out, all-over tone. Without him, the crackling fire was now the brightest thing there.
For a man who committed cold-blooded murder not even an hour ago, Maxie was oddly chipper.
"Friends," he said jovially, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture. "These glum dispositions are unbecoming of you. Rejoice, for the traitor in our midst has been discovered and dealt with. Fear not. Olympus is not sullied by this occasion, and its borders remain secure. Mortals are a treacherous sort, they do such things, but remember that they are simple-minded. We must remember this."
Dionysus nodded regally. "Here, here," he said.
"Good riddance," Calliope added, agreeing with the sentiment.
Cathy's response was delayed by a few seconds, but nevertheless she held her head high. "Hail Olympus," she said, forcing a proud, soft smile.
Maxie beamed, causing the corners of his eyes to crinkle, and they all continued to eat. Maxie in particular seemed to be relishing his meal, no doubt still enthused about his deed. Dionysus and Calliope were the same as they ever were; genteel and unbothered. On the surface at least. Cathy scrambled and collected as much sense of mind as she could to mimic them perfectly, no matter how many times Hephaestus faded into her mind's eye.
Throughout the duration, Cathy only kept her eyes on her plate, picking and rolling the carrots around in their herb glaze, taking nibbles here and there that just turned to flavorless ash in her mouth. She fell very deep into thought.
Maxie seemed to have noticed after a while. "Hestia, are you well?" he asked across the table, his triumph still making his face brilliant.
Calliope quickly looked between the two. "Of course she is," she interjected. "She is Olympus-born!"
Maxie laughed heartily, which never failed to sound as powerful as a boom of thunder. "That she is!" Taking his goblet, he held it grandly in the air to initiate a toast. Cathy smartened up and went for her goblet too, lifting it high, even though the weight of her anxiety attached more and more heft to her arm by the second. Luckily the toast was short—not to mention boastful.
Cathy thought she owed an apology to Calliope, at least within the confines of her mind. Cathy never made her suspicions vocal, and she was glad for it now. Though Calliope continued to be the harsh leader she always was, she did warn Cathy early on about Hephaestus. In doing that, Calliope at least deserved a reprieve despite her callous demeanor. Cathy felt she at least owed the woman that much.
Dinner ended with the same gracious manner, and everybody retired to their rooms. Cathy couldn't leave the dining room fast enough once she was out of sight. She practically glided, barely feeling the marble under her feet, or even her sandals springing against her heels. Her bedroom was not the safest place in the building, everybody knew she was there, but still, the comfort that only a bed could provide, to rest a weary head, to ease the tension of her ever taut muscles, was a welcoming prospect.
But she detoured and went down another staircase. Sleep, however needed, had to wait.
Tartarus. She rolled that word over and over in again her head while tottering down the stairs, kicking up her skirt behind her. Tartarus, Tartarus, Tartarus...
She didn't know that word.
Maxie had said it. Though it made her throat thick to reminisce on the day she'd had, he had said, "I banish thee to the depths of Tartarus" before he let Hephaestus fall.
It sounded like eternal exile. The Ancient Greek equivalent of Hell. But it could have also been a name to a person. Or, because of the harbour engulfing them, was it referencing a body of water?
Cathy swore she'd seen the name written somewhere, maybe sometime in the late hours she was skimming the Greek Myths book when she was getting too tired to absorb as much, but for the life of her, she could not recall it's meaning. And that was too risky.
Floor by floor she descended until she found the hall which housed the office library. The lights were still on, opening a perfectly lit trail. Despite the harmless white panel walls and the gorgeous royal purple carpeting as a guide, Cathy felt nervous looking down it's length, like she were on the Titanic which was gradually taking on water. Or there were lurkers hiding behind every door...
She blinked and breathed in through her nose. Now was not the time to be afraid of monsters slithering through the cracks. She was living with something worse. Purposeful, she bustled down quietly and found the library door. Entering the tiny little study, she wasted no time skimming the spines, searching for that flash of brown and 80's era font.
Five seconds was all it took. Right where she left it.
Plucking it from it's nook, she felt she had no time to lay it down on the desk. Resting the book in her arms, she opened the rear cover, going back a page or two for the Index's T section.
Talos...
Tantalus...
Targitaus...
Tartarus pages 3, 20
Cathy barely noted the numbers before she'd already gathered the book's entire contents and thumbed through the pages to reach her destination faster. She didn't know why she was hurrying, or why she was so jumpy. It had to have been the adrenaline pumping through her veins from what she witnessed. Her shoulders were terribly taut, her nerves were on edge, her fingers were restless and twitchy. It was almost as if she could feel Hephaestus's inescapable arms trapping her again, bringing her closer to her doom.
There! Pressing a finger under the word Tartarus on page three, she dragged it along as she read.
...in Tartarus, the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked, as well as the prison for the Titans. Described as "far below Hades as the earth is below the heavens", Tartarus was a place in the lower world where souls were judged after death and where spirits of the wicked were punished for their crimes.
So it was like the underworld.
Cathy was so engrossed in those words that she had ignored the rumble in the hallway beyond. But there was no mistaking it when the sound drummed and increased in volume. Like a startled deer, her head shot up. Nothing but white panel walls from the corridor could be seen beyond the library's entry. But that was about to change in the blink of an eye.
There was no time to out the book back on the shelf, or to even slam it shut.
Maxie Zeus's mighty, powerful frame filled the doorway, blocking the hall. Blocking escape.
Cathy's heart ceased all existence. She stared straight into his crystal blue eyes, to which he stared back. And just like the first night they met, she knew through the fog clouding her mind that this was to be the final image she'd ever see.
"Hestia?" Maxie questioned. He looked her up and down, then entered the room. "I thought you asleep?"
Cathy was beyond trembling. Her muscles were stone. The book's weight may as well have been akin to a thimble, she felt it as nothing in her arms. Maxie appeared in a pleasant mood, but Cathy wasn't stupid enough to think that the object she held was not damning evidence of her deceit.
Hope sparked when Maxie looked like he wasn't going to pry any further, but something in Cathy's face, something she couldn't help, must have tipped him off that something wasn't quite right. His cordiality faltered when she didn't answer him.
Curiously, he noted the title on her book. Cathy's eyes widened and her nostrils flared. Luck abandoned her a very long time ago, but this moment was one of the rarities. Maxie hadn't seen her guilty expression when he looked away for those precious few seconds. On the flip side, however, it was because he moved on to what was in her hands.
Maxie's easy-going smile faded. The books brief title could be read in a mere second, and it made blatantly clear its contents.
"Why are you reading that?" Maxie asked in a mellowed tone, but Cathy fearfully noted the shrink of his pupils, and his upper lip twitch beneath his facial hair.
This was nothing like when he caught her trespassing on that first frigid and dire night. That was just a stranger who broke into his sacred home. This? This was betrayal. This was discovering somebody you loved was a fake all along. This was mountainous pride crumbling in a massive rockslide. And everybody knew that Maxie did not take kindly to humiliation.
"Hm? Oh, this silly thing?" Cathy said so fast that it was almost as if her mouth had thought of it and not her brain. She flipped the cover and looked at it as if she'd just discovered what she'd been reading. "A remnant of your former inhabitants, I am guessing." She was breathtakingly close to fumbling her delivery on 'former', and by some miracle she leveled her voice, forcing confidence through the width of a straw. "What silly ideas the man we'd known as Hephaestus must've had of us. No doubt he got it from this very tome."
Cathy never knew how her vocal chords managed to create sound in that moment. They felt as though they were rubber stretched tight and nearly reaching their breaking point.
Maxie's eyes flashed, first at the book, then back to her. He wasn't saying anything, Cathy noted, fear prickling like insects under her skin.
Just speak, she begged. She couldn't stand the silent interrogation. In some ways, it was worse than a reaction, because the unknown was torture. In just a split second, ten scenarios flashed through her mind, and she was now tensing, overcompensating to prepare for them all. What was he doing? What was he going to do? She tried her best to subtly turn her head a mere few degrees aside and stiffen her neck, bracing for an impact that could launch her into the desk at her back. Somehow, even after witnessing what he had done just under two hours ago, and now being alone with him, cornered, he scared her more than ever.
Maxie reached for the book. It wasn't a sudden move, much to Cathy's fleeting relief, it was mild and nonpredatory. But that didn't mean she could let her guard down even for a millisecond. Cathy relinquished the book, putting up no resistance whatsoever, watching him, unsure of what he'd do next. Every second felt stolen, like she should have died already in the previous one.
Opening the book and flipping through it, Maxie appeared to be reading passages fleetingly. Then, with one hand, he closed it with a clap that sounded thunderous in the tiny, quiet room.
"We needn't worry about this," he said simply. Glancing imperiously down at the text, it didn't take him long to scoff. "As if they could ever think to understand us." Then, bracing the binding down on his thigh, he ripped the offending page clean out, bicep barely flexing for how easy and quick it was, a move that almost startled Cathy by how suddenly he had done it.
Maxie tossed the glossy page carelessly to the ground and Cathy could only watch it flutter and land between them. Grabbing an even bigger fistful, Maxie tore out more than half this time and made confetti of it straight away. When all that was left was the binding, those too were easily separated with destructive vigor.
Cathy met his eyes again, trying her greatest to suppress an insane, gut-splitting urge to run. Her raw instinct was doing it's best to remove her from the situation, but her mind calculated the cost of blind defiance to who she was standing against.
Maxie looked down at the paper shreds littered at their feet like each one had Hephaestus's face on them. Raising his head, he held both of his hands on Cathy's shoulders with surprising gentleness, keeping her right where she stood.
"We mustn't dwell," Maxie instructed. The gesture was meant to bolster her, but she very nearly cowered away. "We are better. We are stronger. We are divine. Mortals are nothing to fear. We need not read how they think of us, we must see what our presence does to them. They fear us. Remember this."
Cathy braved looking him straight in the eyes. Her jaw was in pain, she'd had no idea how hard she'd been clenching her teeth the whole time. Remembering that she still had a voice, she nodded and said, "I understand your decision, brother. I understand and will follow you to the end."
Maxie's smile was soft. "I knew you would." He clapped her shoulder, squeezing it tight, and finally released her.
Cathy almost wobbled, like the floor was tilting, but she held it together. She needed to remove herself. Now. "The hour grows late," she said. "I shall retire for the evening, I think."
Maxie nodded in understanding. "Do not trouble yourself with thoughts of the snivellous mortal anymore," he said soothingly. "He is banished and gone."
"Indeed he is. Sleep well, brother." Cathy nodded in what almost appeared to be a bow. Even though she wasn't the one to dismiss herself, she wasn't about to forget who was the one in charge.
Passing the mountainous man by going around him, she was almost out the door when Maxie spoke up. "Ah, dearest Hestia. I fear what may have come to pass had you not arrived when you did. You musn't tell the others, they musn't know my moment of weakness. This falls on your ears, and yours alone." He waited on her.
Cathy stopped. Despite the overpowering urge to keep going, she fought it, turned, and bowed her head. "Of course."
"I must confess, I almost gave up all hope. Until you got here. Know that I am glad you came home. And just imagine it! Soon we shall all be here."
Cathy placed her hand on the door frame. "In due time," and this seemed to please Zeus. For a tyrannical headcase he showed incredible patience, like he had all the time in the world. Such was perceived immortality, she surmised.
With that, Cathy departed from the little library, feeling like she not only dodged a bullet but somehow dodged a heat-seeking missile that decimated the immediate area for miles, leaving her dead center, untouched and unharmed.
Maxie didn't follow. Cathy picked up the pace. Her breath shuddered as her brisk strides carried her up the many flights of stairs. Her brain buzzed like an overactive hive. A shrill ringing her in ears squealed so loud that it was bringing on a headache.
She shouldn't have escaped that confrontation. That was just the reality. She should not have been alive in that very moment, walking on her own, aware of the cold sticking to her skin, and the even colder state of everything under the surface. Her pace felt more like trudging. The carpet was royal purple clay, slowly but surely sinking her lower and lower until it swallowed her whole. Her weight suddenly felt so burdensome. No matter how many pounds she had shed in Arkham City, even the heft of her skull alone was enough to pitch her forward and ground her then. She felt awful. And sick. So very, very sick.
Stay solid, she begged herself. One in front of the other...
The darkwood paneling of the topmost hallway housing her bedroom came into view like she was emerging from a fog. The relative safety of her bedroom was so close. As much as she wanted to just bury her face into her pillow and sleep this terrible night away, she knew better than that. In truth, she knew she would be mulling it over all night, reliving haunting images and one of the closest calls she'd ever experienced. But at least her body would be fully supported so she wouldn't have to expend her dwindling energy on worrying about collapsing to the unforgiving floor. On the bed, she would float—and hopefully float away.
Crossing her leg over her knee to get her key—bending would have only grounded her—she clacked it clumsily against the keyhole before it finally slipped in.
Shutting the door with her back, Cathy looked at the ceiling and released the biggest breath she'd ever held in her entire life. Unlike all other times, this one brought no relief at all, it only cleared the way for renewed fear to leak in.
Her brushes with death were becoming a new burden on her psyche. Not that she ever wanted to die, but as if counting on her own survival wasn't enough, she had cheated a coffin way too many times, and it was going to catch up with her. It just had to. Her luck was bound to run out, and statistically, it had to happen soon.
Needing something to occupy her stiff hands, she could only think of building a fire in the grate. Silence and static images seemed like the worst thing to concentrate on. She needed something distracting. Anything. Nearly falling to her knees at the grate, she flipped open the matchbook. A quick strike later, she stoked the tiny little flame underneath the log pile, encouraging it to grow. Flashes of orange popped on the marble enclosure as she blew on the embers.
A knock pattered on her door, giving Cathy the scare of her life. Still kneeling over the hearth, she clapped her hand tight over her mouth. It muffled her panting, yet it sounded so loud to her ears. She immediately thought of Maxie on the otherside. Cathy didn't think she even had the energy left to conjure more lies right to his face.
The knock grew a little more insistent. There was nothing else Cathy could do, she was cornered. Hugging herself tight for just a second, she stood up to answer. The door came up way too soon. She inched the door open a crack, holding it firmly like a shield between herself and whoever was waiting on the other side.
Firelight spread upon the pillar of Calliope's white skirt. The relief was miniscule, but Cathy didn't feel any further out of the woods.
"Where were you?" whispered Calliope.
Cathy was stricken. She trusted Calliope more now than she did hours ago, she really did. The woman was like the self-appointed sergeant of what was left of their little crusade. But Cathy could not tell her about this.
"It's very hard to sleep after...after..." Cathy trailed off, but Calliope seemed to understand completely because she nodded.
"I know." She was looking up and down the corridor. "It's not very safe here," she said. "Can I come in for a minute? We need to have a talk."
It was such a bad time to be reminded, but Calliope's phrasing reminded Cathy of her former manager at the bookstore, how the talk was never just a talk. It meant either verbal punishment or humiliation. Cathy almost couldn't believe she'd come to the point where she would have pleaded to instead go through that a thousand times over if she knew what would happen much later.
She stepped aside and beckoned Calliope inside.
"Thank you," Calliope said as Cathy closed the door behind her. "Dionysus is working on menu courses for the next week. I was hoping he'd be with me to help explain these to you, but I don't want Maxie to catch us all together. He might think we're conspiring against him."
Cathy had to agree with the notion. "Needed to talk about what?" she asked. This really was not a good time for her. The skip in her heartbeat from the seriously close call not even fifteen minutes ago was still sending shooting chills through her bones. She needed air, she needed space to just breathe. But she couldn't let Calliope know, and so, she buried those feelings. Crushed them down into the already overflowing well.
"There are certain things I think you need to know. You have questions. A lot of them. I'll try and fill as many blanks as I can. This is your chance, ask me what you need."
Cathy bobbled her mouth wordlessly at this sudden offer. This was it. An opportunity she always desperately needed. She'd rehearsed so many questions in her mind since her incarceration at Club Olympus, tried reworking the wording so that nobody would be the wiser and catch on to her deception. And now, not a single question was coming to mind.
Calliope waited. Her dark green eyes were deep and probing. She wasn't impatient, but there was a hurried look about her. Like Maxie might be prowling the halls just behind her.
"Why?" was all Cathy could think of. "Why all this? What happened? Why does he think I'm a goddess?"
Calliope scoffed, but not unkindly. "Besides that he needs psychiatric help? Honestly, even after all this time I haven't fully figured out how he thinks, but it might depend on how he found you."
That was a prompt for Cathy to explain. She suspected it was also to satisfy Calliope's curiosity.
"He found me in one of the lower floors. I had started a fire in the fireplace to warm myself. I made myself a rickety little raft out of garbage from an alleyway and paddled all the way over here from Park Row. I meant to row all the way to Gotham, but the snow was too much. I needed a place to hole up for the night. I accidentally fell into the water and needed to start a fire to warm myself. That's when he found me."
Calliope scarcely blinked, she had a adopted a very studying gaze. "Just what I thought. Your 'chosen form', as Maxie would say, most likely met the right requirements to attribute a Greek god to."
Cathy knew exactly what those were. The hearth was obvious, but there was also the brown blanket she'd been wrapped in like it was a cloak. Her earthy, demurely toned hair. The fear she carried, which Maxie mistook for meek countenance.
Calliope continued. "Out of all the gods of Olympus, one of the least known is Hestia. Either that could be a blessing for you, or it could be bad."
"Bad? Could be bad how?"
"By little information available for you to study."
Cathy couldn't argue that.
"He wasn't always like this, you know," said Calliope with a surprising tenderness. "He was eccentric, I will not lie, but he was a good boss once. I only wish I had seen the signs earlier. I'm sure you heard in the news when he was admitted to Arkham. He must have had something brewing deep down inside himself. Instead of curing his minor delusions, I'm afraid one too many rounds of electro-shock boosted his complex. He was a changed man when he came back. Different."
Cathy became more and more absorbed as the story unfolded. "What happened?"
"His return to the Olympus Club was very unannounced, and I thought everything was fine. The rumours of him dying there weren't true. He seemed invigored, if I'll be honest. Powerful. He always had an ego, but this was a new self-confidence I'd never seen in him before. The changes were really small at first. The Club always had Grecian inspiration in decorating, but he started insisting on more of it. The foyer with the sky painted on the ceiling? That was one of the new changes. More fireplaces were added, and he started commissioning some rooms be changed into bedrooms. I didn't know what for at the time."
"You were his assistant, weren't you? His right hand."
Calliope nodded. "I should have seen what was happening sooner," she admonished herself, looking at the ceiling. "There were warning signs from the beginning and I didn't notice until it was too late. I was just trying to do my job. He always talked about his family coming home. When I would ask him to elaborate, he would just chuckle at me and tell me that everything would fall into place soon."
A little nagging question that always seemed to be in the back of Cathy's mind made it self known. "So, why does he call you Calliope if that isn't your real name?"
At least, Cathy assumed it wasn't her real name. That was a safe question, right? She wasn't asking Calliope to divulge any previous identities, just Maxie's reasoning.
Calliope crossed her arms, which always seemed her defacto position when she wasn't in Muse-mode. But she didn't look surly in regards to what she'd been asked. "I became Maxie's new Muse after getting promoted to his personal assistant. I always had a clipboard, jotting down his whims, his wishes, his plans and orders. Eventually he came to associate it as Calliope the Muse's tablet, and scoring poetry. Him calling me Calliope came sporadic at first. I corrected him sometimes, others I just let it go. Then one day he just stopped calling me by my real name altogether. By then, Arkham City was well on it's was to being approved, and Maxie would not budge."
For the first time in seemingly what felt like a long, long while, Calliope finally looked Cathy in the eye, dark green on soft green. "I planned to evacuate, you know," Calliope said heavily. "Dionysus, of course, did too. Almost all of the employees abandoned this place as soon as the City's walls were going up. Maxie came back from Arkham when there was only about half of us left. In his absence, I was the one who kept Olympus running. And now I was ready to escape when I'd seen what he'd become. But I couldn't. Maxie was aware of my every move and barely allowed me to leave his side. He dictated more and more changes, but we had less and less people willing to make them. Dionysus was the head chef in our kitchens at that time. He was stuck, just like me. Maxie would not let him go because he was convinced we were both the Muse and the god he took us for. We were prisoners."
Cathy didn't know how to hold herself. She leaned primarily to one side, and crossed her arms only because they felt even more useless being by her sides.
Still, Calliope went on. "My reward for staying true to Zeus was a place on Olympus with the rest of the gods." She seemed to be distracted again by the floor. "I'll be damned if I let anybody else die on my watch. And right now, it's you who is the most vulnerable out of all of us. I can't stand it anymore."
A distant phrase triggered somewhere in Cathy's memory. That's three, Dionysus! Three now.
"Calliope?"
"Hm?"
"Who was the third person?"
"Third person?"
Cathy counted off her fingers. "Persephone. Hephaestus. But you said there were three that Maxie killed. Who?"
In a gesture that Cathy has never seen before, Calliope bit a corner of her lip. Her eyes were fixed and unfocused, and she seemed to be concentrating on the wall. She clucked her tongue. "It never gets easier seeing it, but that one hurt the worst of all. The poor thing. She loved him so much."
"Who did?"
"Clio. Maxie's girlfriend."
"You make it sound like something bad happened," Cathy ventured carefully, positive that it was the correct assumption to make by Calliope's tone.
"I first met her when I was hired here. She was my friend for three years. Clio noticed Maxie's changes a lot sooner than we all did. Eventually, Maxie had enough of her attempts to bring him back to reality and promoted me as the replacement. After Clio was fired..." Calliope swallowed and blinked furiously. "after Clio was fired, Maxie killed her a month later during one of his temperamental rages. That's when I knew how serious his new personality was. I couldn't get out. I had to stay. Dionysus and I knew eachother before, but we became very united in all this. We've been biding our time ever since, trying to outlast Arkham City, and look out for eachother in the meantime. His friendship has meant everything."
"But you guys weren't alone for long, right?"
"That's right. Hephaestus showed up not long after Arkham City was fully functional. Or, non-functional is a more fitting word. I knew what he was, but Maxie couldn't see anyone else beyond the limp and the scar. Hephaestus was one of the gods he was waiting for to return. As if it wasn't enough for me and Dionysus to look after eachother, we had a new person to keep an eye on.
"Next came Persephone a week later. I'll never forget how scared and desperate she was..." Calliope's lips tightened.
Cathy held up a hand. "It's okay, you don't have to tell me. I know."
Calliope cleared her throat, patting a hand over her heart. "Well, we all know how that ended." Nerves seemed to be consuming her, most unlike the Calliope that Cathy knew. She was looking at the door like someone was liable to walk in any second. "We should end this here, I got to get going. I've been here too long, Maxie might be around."
Cathy nodded quickly in understanding. Even she was feeling like every minute was more stolen time. "Thank you. For letting me know everything. I mean that."
"You're welcome." With barely a goodbye, Calliope opened the door a crack and peeked into the hall. Judging by her composure, the coast was clear. After slipping through, she looked at Cathy one more time.
"You've earned my trust," she said, and then quietly closed the door.
When enough seconds passed and nothing disturbed the door again, Cathy finally exhaled the tightness in her lungs. She rubbed her weary eyes. Her conversation with Calliope was enlightening, it truly was and she was grateful for it, but at the same time it drained the last of her will to stand on her own.
She massaged her forehead, as if it would in some way relieve the bulky sensation in her skull. Desperate for her bed, she trudged toward it. Pulling back the blankets and just about ready to hop in, something in contrast caught her eye beside her, outside the window.
Spotting something out of place in the darkness, beyond the gentle snowfall, she frowned.
Odd.
Normally Wonder Tower's topmost windows were dark.
Now, there looked to be some activity going on up there.
A/N: OMG, what the hell? I took a year to update this?! I didn't think it was that long...
Readers, you should have told me sooner! I had no idea so much time had passed since my last update. Geez, what an asshole move from me. I'm sorry. When your mind is on a hundred things at once, you tend to accidentally neglect some others...