- ares -
She breathed in, out. Stared at me, wide-eyed. Stayed quiet. And for those seven quiet seconds I couldn't tell from her expression what she was thinking - but then she suddenly broke eye contact, seemed to search the room, and rested her glance on the television - now stuck on the game menu with the character going down the same slope over and over on a loop - as her chest rose and fell with her heavy breaths. She sneaked another look at me but immediately averted her eyes when she saw I was still watching her. Disbelief, confusion, fear all seemed to pass through her and all the confidence she had found just seconds ago had left her again. It was as if she had been overcome with emotion and then the moment that bitterness had come out, she had realized what she'd said, what she'd done, and retreated into herself again. I wasn't even sure if she had heard what I'd said, or if she might only be reacting to her own words.
I wanted to comfort her, but I didn't know what to say. I couldn't rush to her side to hold her, kiss her on the crown of her head the way she liked so much, keep her safe against my chest - because what she was afraid of was me and I saw her flinch at even my smallest movement in her direction. My fists uncurled, I stretched my fingers - flinch - and I tried to quiet my thumping heart and relax my tense muscles as I waited anxiously for any indication whatsoever of what I could do, what she would accept.
When she ventured another look in my direction, her gaze slid down to my chest and she bit her lip with an uneasy frown, so I pulled a navy T-shirt out of thin air and put it on. That simple action seemed to soothe her a little bit, but still she wouldn't speak, still her body seemed ready to flee at any moment and yet aware that there was hardly a point in trying to flee.
"Are you…" I started, but I had no idea where that sentence would go and trailed off. I wished more than anything at that moment that I could rewind the last three minutes, that I could have realized earlier that of course she was scared after everything that had happened. Had I learned nothing at all from the last time? Had I completely forgotten everything, the only thing I had been able to think about over the past week? I'd gotten so caught up in the moment like I always did, so caught up in whatever emotion was steering me that I hadn't considered the consequences of my words and my actions. And this moment was honestly no different: regret washed over me and I longed to cross that ocean of distance between us and tell her how sorry I was, that I would never hurt her, that my body and my divinity would only ever serve and protect her.
My heart jumped when she found her voice. "Love me?" she asked quietly. "Love?"
So she had heard it. I felt a twist in my stomach - maybe I'd subconsciously hoped that she hadn't, that I could swallow those words and eventually respond to what she'd so falsely assumed in a less dramatic manner. But no, she had heard it, and she didn't wait for me to answer her question.
"How can you… love me?"
"What do you mean?" I kept my voice even and disengaged it from all emotion in an effort not to overwhelm her, but its only effect was that she seemed to take it as a lack of affectivity and withdrew even further.
"I mean…" she said, "I mean, how can you - how do you…" She struggled to find her words, but seemed determined to press on now that she had started. My Emma, my persistent, resolute, stubborn Emma. She amazed me. "You're a god," she said, and looked surprised to have said it out loud, but her voice grew clearer and she finally looked me straight in the eye. "What do you even know about love?"
What did I know about love? What kind of a question was that? "Emma, do you realize," I started, and knew instantly that those were the wrong words but the rest was already coming out, "that I know love better than any mortal in this damned world? That I've had infinite lifetimes to learn exactly what it means?" I tried to measure my voice, not too heated and not too detached either, but her expression told me that my soft intonation only made it sound threatening again, damn it - I wanted to make her feel better, not worse.
She didn't miss a beat. "But that's the point!"
Her sudden shift in tone baffled me and it took me a second too long to realize that it was anger in her voice, her brain once again having misinterpreted her undiminishing anxiety as anger, and I kept quiet in a moment in disbelief at my own inability to detect it. She blinded me to even my own most basic senses.
And if I'd seen it coming I could have braced myself for it, but being hit with my own primal essence felt so good, impatience and passion and outrage was what I thrived on after all, and despite all my centuries of practicing restraint I still couldn't help but jump on it and feed on it - it filled my body like adrenaline, like a drug I couldn't resist, and I felt the exhilaration course through my veins, into my muscles, into my fingers, into my brain too - and it took everything to keep my feet where they were and my hands at my sides and to not lunge into action.
"You're immortal!" she continued, just shy of shouting as her body absorbed my feverish energy - shit, shit, shit, I needed to put a stop to this, if I didn't get myself together we would only keep amplifying each other's heat - "You have no idea what it's like to be human! You don't know what it's like to know that all of this will end some day and that you only have the one chance to do this right. And on top of all that you literally are the opposite of love, you are hate and murder and war and…" She paused to breathe, but it was only briefly and there was a fire in her eyes. "How the hell are you supposed to know a thing about human love?"
If I had taken even a single second to think things through, I could have explained to her, finally, that she'd misunderstood what I embodied, could have told her about all the time I'd spent among mortals and all I'd learned about the concept of a finite life, could have taken a moment to collect myself and regain some calm. I could have realized how stupid it was to be arguing about love with the one person I didn't want to argue with. But I didn't think.
There was a tornado in me, thundering, roiling, churning, an agitation that ached to manifest but that I'd carefully buried just beneath the surface only to come out when sufficiently exasperated. It had taken me tens of thousands of years but I'd finally learned to tame my roaring temper, to tone it down and clear my head so it could take the reins. But that was only outward - my heart still effervesced as ever. And bridling that indignation meant being careful not to have anything bubble up to the surface, including happiness and delight, and life was flat and stale - but then I'd met Emma and I had wanted to give into the pleasure and gratification she gave me. I'd thought I could relinquish control of one thing but still curb everything else. I had been naive and overconfident in my own ability, as I so often was - I was letting go and it was so, so satisfying to release the friction and to let the turmoil out. I couldn't stop myself from saying what I said next.
"I spent millennia fucking love! Actual Love! You think Aphrodite would have let me if I was so clueless?" I hollered - if my neighbors hadn't heard us yet, they had now.
"You - you really just -" she sputtered, but then she just stared at me, speechless.
"So how do you have the nerve to lecture a god, to lecture me, me of all people, about —"
"Hi there, sweethearts."
Both our heads jerked in the direction of the doorway to the dining room, where a tall and athletic young man dressed in a sharp suit and horn-rimmed glasses was leaning against the frame. Ace hopped up from his dog bed, tail wagging, and padded over for a cuddle.
"Who are you?" Emma snapped - surprisingly, because she was normally polite or at the very least composed to strangers.
"Hermes, here to save the day, yet again," he said, and when I opened my mouth to speak, "Ares, I advise you to shut up." He straightened and came closer. If he recognized Emma - and of course he did - he didn't show it. Hermes was after all a master of charades.
"What the fuck do you think you're do—" I thundered, but was cut off again.
"I'm serious, Ares. Trust me, you don't want to say another word."
Of course, for all I knew about fury and rage, Hermes would always have the upper hand when it came to arguments and words - and I also knew that he had my best interests at heart. His interruption was a sudden breach in the surge of my furor and I felt it ebb away much more quickly than it had built as my thoughts cleared, my muscles softened and I eventually nodded at Hermes, who was patiently watching me.
When he saw that I was no longer at risk of erupting any second, Hermes turned to Emma and smiled. "Emma, I've come to see if you might need a lift home, before all hell breaks loose here."
As soon as my temper had receded, so had Emma's, and she looked bewildered by the sudden change. "You - what?" She looked from Hermes to me and back again, lost her balance briefly, found her footing and fidgeted with her hands as if she didn't know what to do with them.
"We could take the scenic route," Hermes winked. "Get a nice bird's eye view of the city."
"A… what? You'd… carry me on your back? As a bird?" She gaped and frowned at the same time - a funny expression, one I would have laughed at had the atmosphere not been so tense just moments before.
"Nah. See these?" Hermes lifted a foot and as he did, his neat Oxford shoes morphed into golden winged sandals.
In the quiet seconds that followed Hermes and I could almost hear the cogs of her brain turning as she connected the dots of her art history lessons with what she saw right in front of her. We exchanged a quick look - for me to see Hermes's reaction to seeing Emma (there was none), for him to check whether I'd cooled down sufficiently (I had).
"Yeah, Hermes is the only one who can fly," I then said dryly when Emma still hadn't said a word. "We're all very jealous."
Hermes chuckled. The sound was almost foreign, and with it the atmosphere lifted a little. "Aren't you forgetting someone, Ares?"
"What? Who?"
He rolled his eyes playfully. "Starts with an E, ends with 'ros'? And his siblings, for that matter?"
I sniggered. "They don't actually fly anymore. I don't even know if their wings will still carry them, now that they're grown."
"That's because you never bothered to ask."
"Well, smart-ass, if I had wings attached to my body without having to turn myself into a godforsaken vulture, I would never walk again and just fly everywhere," I said.
"Believe me, that gets old after a few centuries. But I see why a pretty boy like you is reluctant to shift into an hideous vulture."
"As if turtles are any better."
"Tortoises, Ares. And yes, they are."
Our lighthearted back-and-forth was interrupted by a soft cough and we both glanced at Emma. She clearly hadn't meant to draw attention to herself - her face was averted slightly and her shoulders turned in.
Hermes clapped his hands together. "Miss Sawyer! My sincerest apologies. It seems I momentarily forgot about my reason for coming here. So what will it be?" he asked cheerfully.
That reminder of what Hermes had asked her - whether she wanted him to take her home - brought me straight back to the heated argument he had so expertly cut short, and even more than that, to my admission that I loved her. There was no taking back those words. Well, of course there was always a way to make her forget - but that just didn't seem like an option anymore. Not if this were to be real, genuine.
Emma looked alarmed for a second or two, but then squared her shoulders in an attempt at bravery. "I think…" She took a deep breath and shifted her balance from one foot to another. "I think it's better if I stay."
"You do?" Hermes and I asked in unison before exchanging glances, both surprised by the other's surprise.
She briefly glanced at me, biting her lower lip. "For now, I mean, and talk this through with… Noah." I didn't miss her refusal to say my real name.
A slight smile formed and slowly grew on Hermes' face. "And you're sure about that? Will you be okay, what with that idiotic point he was making just before I arrived?"
She swallowed visibly, but nodded. "Yes. I'll be fine."
"As you wish." Hermes' amused glance lingered on her for another second before he turned to me. "It seems you've found a good one, Ares. The right one." He paused pointedly.
I took a moment to absorb that. I'd been thinking it, too, but I hadn't talked to anyone about my doubts - and now Hermes mentioned it of his own accord. "How do you even know about her?" I then asked hesitantly.
Hermes chuckled. "Do you have to ask?"
Right. Herald of the gods and all. Hermes talked to everyone.
"But I would've liked to hear it from you first instead of Apollo."
"I'm sorry." I normally did tell Hermes everything. "But you see now why I didn't, right?"
"I suppose I do." Emma was startled by his sudden look in her direction. "But that's also exactly why you could have talked to me. I was there."
"I know." I looked away. Hermes knew me better than anyone - he knew that my entire life I'd always tried to bear the full weight of my troubles on my shoulders, and after thousands of years he still tried to get me to share the load. I didn't often get to repay the favor: as god of trade and travel he was busier than ever but he was hardly ever stressed, and he generally approached life with more levity and carefreeness than I had ever been able to attain.
"I'll leave you two to it," he said. "Don't screw this up, Ares. Miss Sawyer." He tipped an imaginary hat at her and vanished.