Stepping out of a shadow

Year 731 AD, Sanctuary of Athena:

"Athena, wait! You are going to fall down the stairs if you do not slow down!"

"Miss Athena!"

It was now five years since the Athena of this era had been reborn as a baby, and like most children of that age group, she had quite the energy to burn if she was in a good mood.

"Got you, cutie! Was Pope Ishir taking too long in his duties to not come and play with you as promised?" Sade smiled as she showed off how the Gold Saints could move at the speed of light, tossing the young Goddess up in the air and then catching her again a few times, making her laugh in joy.

"Again, Sade! Again, Sade!"

"Thanks for helping us catch her before something happened, lady Sade!" some worried nursemaids thanked the twenty-five-year old female Gemini twin as Sade landed in front of them with no problems.

"I have some free training with young children thanks to Anshu when he was just two years older than what Athena is now. So no reason to worry."

"Sade!" Athena said aloud, demanding her attention, "where is Amari and Nasrin?"

Oh, she had wanted to see the female Sagittarius Saint train on her dance performance, where Amari often would be seen and painting something?

"Ah…they were sent on a mission by Pope Ishir three days ago, sweetie, I do not know when they will be back."

Athena made an unhappy face at learning this. Then, she asked something out of the blue, like most children would do at times:

"Are they going to kiss like you and Eagle Lihua did yesterday?"

This caught Sade off guard, with the reveal that someone had indeed seen her and her female lover despite trying to find a private place for some more romantic mood.

"Why do you think that my brother and Nasrin would kiss each other?!"

"He is looking at her in the same way as you and Lihua do without your masks on your faces," Athena answered bluntly, as if that was the most obvious thing for anyone to know.

"...I am having a talk with the Pope. Right now."

And under the confused protests of Athena, Sade hurried up towards the Chamber of the Pope with her in the adult woman's arms. One reason to why she had been a bit alarmed about the young Athena noticing how her brother looked at Nasrin, was the risk of rather uncomfortable questions:

With his congenital hearing impairment which was viewed as an undesirable handicap for a Saint by the same people who looked down on them for what their late father had done despite that twenty-five years had passed, Amari had a history of rather poor, short-lived relationships when it came to romance. Narrow-minded people who did not see his true self, who looked down on him for not hearing normally and would make fun of him when all Amari wanted to be loved by someone outside his family members and few friends.

And one of those who Sade believed to see the true worth of her older twin brother, was Sagittarius Nasin.

"The problem is that Nasrin is actually likening my brother as well now when she is an adult woman as well, but she is so scared of confessing her feelings to him because she is aware of how his previous experiences risk making him think that she intends to mock him as well!" Sade thought for herself while mentally cursing those thick scars in his heart that Amari only revealed in paintings that no one was allowed to see without his own permission, and hoped that this time, her brother could find happiness with someone who saw him for who he was.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Somewhere in Egypt, alongside the Nile:

No matter how much Nasrin hated to remember how she had ended up with this body, she was very grateful that her castration into a eunuch had given her one serious blessing for fighting as a Saint in the form of long arms and legs. Sure, she could sometimes be called a beanstalk as a joke by her fellow female Saints because of her height and those long limbs, but it was never done with unfriendly intentions.

"Arrow of Faith!"

One of the last foot soldiers of Hades was shot down with the golden arrow of the Sagittarius Saint.

"Good shot there, Nasrin!"

It was rare for Amari to do missions outside the Sanctuary because his poorer hearing risked causing misunderstandings, but when two Gold Saints were sent out together, like he and Nasrin this time, it worked with her covering his weakness

"Thank you…eh!?"

Suddenly, the leather strap keeping her mask fastened revealed itself to have been partly cut in two pieces in two during the fight despite how those bandits would have been common foot soldiers for Hades, and what was even more distressing for Nasrin in this very moment, was how both the mask and her headscarf suddenly slid off her head.

"...ah!" Amari realized in growing alarm what this risked to have for outcome when he felt her Cosmo suddenly send out emotions of distress and naturally turned around to see what the cause could be, with her mask not covering her bare face. After all, the rule for this sort of situation said that a female Saint had to either love or kill the man who saw her without her mask. It was not without reason that many female Saints across the generations wanted to get this law abolished, for while it did give them the power of a choice, not all of them, like Sade and Lihua, wanted to kill someone who had seen their face in an honest accident. Not to mention, there were also tales of how said law risked being abused by both men and women to force someone else into an unwanted relationship.

"I was not doing this on purpose, Amari!" Nasrin called out to him while trying to cover her face in both hands and backing away, referring to how Islamic women would always cover their hair, which she, Sade and a few other of the female Saints were doing as a way of showing their faith. By backing away, she also tried to non-verbally tell the African Saint that she did not want to kill him.

"Nasrin…wait!"

But she was already running away at the speed of light, ignoring that her mask and scarf had been left behind.

"Nasrin…"

Thanks to having a sister who could enlighten him about this rather idiotic rule for the female Saints, Amari could tell that Nasrin must feel deeply conflicted about what just happened. And to be honest, he felt the same. Mainly because he had hoped to use this mission as an opportunity to tell her that he wanted to try out a courtship with her, if she would like.

Back in the Sanctuary, it was pretty impossible to miss how Nasrin basically crash-landed into the Sagittarius Temple.

"Nasrin? Nasrin, where is Amari? What happened to make you rush home like this?"

Sade had seen the Sagittarius Cloth standing in the outer hall, so she went straight to the inner chambers, where she found the five years younger woman curled up into a ball under a blanket.

"It is all over now, thanks to my own carelessness during the battle….he was not supposed to see my face or my hair! I tried to cover myself before he turned around due to sensing my Cosmo shuddering in alarm over the leather strap breaking, but he did see it. He did see it very clearly because I was careless!"

Oh, Sade did understand what Nasrin had to be so distressed about.

"I would rather have you as a sister-in-law than a murdered brother because of that damn law, you know."

A faint crying could be heard from below the blanket.

"What if he does not want to be married to me because of seeing my face?! I know how those previous relationships shattered some of his self-confidence, because one of those people saw him outside his handicap! I do not want him to think that I am like…them…that I will only pretend to act affectionate towards him in public and then belittle him behind closed doors!"

Feeling a headache entering, Sade knew that this was going to be another situation where she was caught between two people she cared for.

"Mother?" she called as Fatima just passed with the empty bread basket in her arms that suggested she had been delivering some freshly baked bread to Athena, "Please come over here and help me? Nasrin and my brother have ended up in a situation where they both are caught between a rock and a hard place."

"Amari and Nasrin? Ayyan, please give me some wisdom to help those two and not make it worse," Fatima whispered for herself as she entered the Sagittarius Temple.

Just to avoid any misunderstandings when he returned late that evening from Egypt, Amari did mention the accident to Pope Ishir, who agreed that it was a tricky situation.

"What are your own feelings about all this, Amari? I know that you like to watch Nasrin when she does that dance training that she faintly remembers from her young childhood before more sorrowful things happened to her."

Amari did look away slightly, as if he felt somewhat ashamed for watching Nasrin in such a manner. But he did often see Nasrin fly around in the sky, and do those graceful movements with her long-limbed body whenever she did the usual training or dancing…

It was a grace that he wanted to try catching in his paintings, even if it would be only a faint echo.

"I do not know if she feels alright with a more or less forced relationship out of the blue, if she does not choose to kill me, sire."

At least he was honest in that, and Ishir chose to not poke further into this. It was for the two Saints involved to fix this mess, they were fully grown adults several years back, even with the age difference of five years between them, and more than old enough to deal with those sorts of situations themselves.

"Amari, welcome back!" Anshu greeted from the back of the Pisces Temple at seeing his former foster-brother leave the Chamber of the Pope, holding up a lantern next to his face so Amari could see his face clearly, "Hm? Isn't that the headscarf of Nasrin? And her mask?!"

And Amari had to explain the whole thing a second time for the evening.

"Daw, really a nasty situation, indeed. I am grateful that I am not going through any of that nonsense…yet…I mean, I am fifteen already, so something in the romance field is likely to hit me hard soon."

Somehow, seeing Anshu showing a faint nervousness though his body language, looking side-ways before focusing on him again, made Amari smile a little in sympathy.

"Enjoy those blissful moments of peace before it hits you, yes."

Of course, with Anshu identifying himself as a man despite being born on the body of a woman, he was sort of blurring the normal lines between the male and female Saints.

"Sorry for not being able to offer any useful advice here, though…"

But Amari was grateful that Anshu did not think that either he or Nasrin had done anything wrong. Just like Pope Ishir also said, it was an honest accident that could happen between many Saints of Athena, and it was the law who proved problematic because it forced Nasrin to choose and Amari having to worry about how she would act, not the two Saints this time.

"Do not apologize, as you admitted yourself, you have yet to know how it is to be in love. Wisdom comes throughout life no matter what age a person is, in the form of experiences and new knowledge that will be collected every day of your life."

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Over the coming seven days, neither Nasrin or Amari made contact with each other. Apart from leaving her mask and headscarf at the entrance to the Sagittarius Temple so she could cover up herself as normally, the male half of the Gemini twins stayed away from her.

"Oi, Sade. Earth to Sade, your head is up among the clouds. Are you fearing the worst scenario to happen?" Lihua asked when noticing that Sade was staring out into nothing.

"Of course I am! I do not want to lose my brother, but I also do not want to see Nasrin force herself into a relationship that she and Amari feels to be…based on something they were forced into against their own will."

That was a polite way of saying it, since they both knew of stories where the mask law had caused miserable relationships because the female Saint had not wanted to kill the male who had seen her face, and the man or boy feeling trapped in a relationship which he can not leave on the risk of being killed.

"Ugh…of all the times I want to be a helpful sister to my brother, especially after everything in the past, it is impossible for me to do something!"

But the worst was this anxious fear she felt, to dread that every time she saw Amari, it risked to be the last time she would see him alive.

On the other hand, Amari had gone to the place where he knew Nasrin to be found dancing.

"A good breeze is passing though."

Spotting her, he did let go of several parchments where he had drawn her in various poses and situations in the past, the wind carrying them towards where Nasrin just had removed the mask to wipe off her face with some cloth.

"Ah….?"

Understandably, she got a little curious about seeing the parchments land around her, and when turning one upwards, naturally blushed when seeing that it was a drawing of herself, dressed in the Sagittarius Cloth and its wings spread out behind her like she was about to fly off to the sky. Made in the characteristic style of Amari.

"We need to talk, Nasrin."

She almost jumped in fright at hearing his deeper voice so close, with her focus on the same artistic skills that had caught her own eye long before realizing that she liked Amari more than just as a friend.

"Um…Amari…about what happened on the last mission…even if it was an honest accident that you saw my face…you see, for the past year…"

Her body language spoke of nervousness, even as she did not yet turn around. With how the female Saints wore those masks, he and Sade had agreed on the importance of being able to read their body language when their faces was covered like that, and given that Amari knew of the very real possibility that he one day would go completely deaf in the future due to an injury in battle or similar, he wanted to read other people though their body language from a early age.

"Yes?" he asked kindly, hoping to help her a little that way. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Nasrin turned around to face him, no longer hiding her face with her hands as the mask laid on a stone nearby.

"I-if you are fine with it, then I…I would…I mean…I have been liking you for the past year! Not merely as a fellow Saint of Athena and a good friend…but as a man that I want to marry! It has nothing to do with you seeing my face eight days ago, I mean in a real, romantic sense!"

Glaring around in case someone would see them, Amari laid his hands gently on her shoulders and then stunned Nasrin by kissing her on the mouth.

"Then we are even in that feeling. Because when the mission was over, I was thinking of asking if you would like to try a courtship with me."

There, he had finally said the words that he had wanted her to hear since a few months back.

"...y-you….really…mean it?" the female Sagittarius Saint asked, wondering if this was a dream that she would soon wake up from.

"Do you want another kiss to prove it? he teased in a friendly manner, and she shook her head, feeling bubbling emotions of joy and victory in her chest.

"Amari!" they could hear Sade calling from somewhere, "Where are you? Not the right time for you to start a new painting, it is time for the new captain of the Sanctuary guards to be named and you know why the Pope wanted you to be present!"

For some reason, Amari smiled.

"Come, I think you will like to witness this."

He picked up his scattered drawings from the ground and the mask, which he then gave to Nasrin so she could cover her still very blushing face again. Then, holding hands, they left together.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Being the Captain of the Sanctuary guards was an important role due to them being the main defense of the Sanctuary if all the Saints were out fighting in the Holy War or some other situation that made a lot of Saints be absent.

"I have chosen the new Captain after much thinking of every possible choice," Pope Ishir addressed the crowd gathered in front of the Aries Temple, "and the candidate I ended up picking, was offering a suggestion that could be useful for both the guards and the Saints, even for future generations."

Of course, this did draw attention.

"Both the guards and the Saints?"

"Even future generations?"

"What could that be?"

Seeing that Amari and Nasrin had arrived, Ishir chose the moment to reveal the new Captain of the guards:

"The one chosen as the new Captain is…Gemini Amari."

Of course, there were some mixed reactions when the name was revealed. And one woman among the civilians, who had openly mocked Amari in the past for his poor hearing outside the rather worn-out scorn towards the Gemini twins about the deeds of their late father Ayaan, even had a nerve to say straight out:

"What use is a handicaped Saint who can not even hear properly!? No, let someone else with normal abilities take that role…or someone with a less criminal lineage."

"SHUT UP ABOUT MY BROTHER AND FATHER!"

Then, all of a sudden, the intended rant was broken off by Sade closing one fist and showing no restraint about literally hitting the other woman straight in the face, sending her flying a distance away.

"If being "normal" means belittling those who are different and acting all high and mighty, like you are better than those persons, then shut up!" Sade kept raising her voice despite not shouting, and looked ready to strike out again if needed as the other woman sat up in shock with a nasty bruise forming on her cheek and her mouth bleeding, "You know nothing of the world outside this part of Greece, having never traveled beyond our hidden borders! You dare to look down on Amari and act as if he is worthless, even now…because he refused to let you treat him like a helpless child who is depending on others for every single little thing in daily life, was it? Stop viewing him as less able than others! So what if he is having difficulty hearing? If you bothered to look up historical Saints from the past, you would find that quite a few of them have successfully served Athena despite their handicaps!"

As Sade raged and even had to be held back by Amari with a hand on her shoulder to avoid the situation going out of control, Ishir had actually expected this sort of reaction on his choice. Besides, it was really getting worn-out with people trying to bring up the infamous deed of Ayaan as an excuse to look down on his now adult twin children.

"Just how many times do I have to do this every year before you people learn to stop insulting Ayaan for his deeds into the faces of his offspring or stop taking all five functional senses for granted? Sometimes I get the not very flattering impression that a group of monkeys would be more intelligent than us humans. Tenbu Hōrin!"

With the most powerful attack of the Virgo Saint, Ishir stripped all of the protesters of two senses. To give them a taste of what sort of life that Amari would have in the future, he chose to remove their hearing, and the ability to speak by numbing their tongues as they kept using hurtful words against the Gemini twins about Ayaan or how he would "taint" their lives by being the massive shadow neither one would ever step out from.

"Spending the next twelve months as fully deaf and mute should teach you a lesson about how much you take your hearing and ability to speak for granted in everyday life."

With the protesters quickly scared off by Sade raising her Cosmo in a very threatening manner, Amari could finally speak in peace:

"As His Holiness said, I have an idea that can be rather useful in situations for both the guards and Saints. To be precise, a sign language with set signs that means either words or a whole meaning. Sister, Anshu? Can you please help me show an example of what I mean?"

Nodding, Sade made a set of hand signals to the young Pisces Saint, who sent back a different signal.

"Sade just said "Incoming enemy attack, be on guard" in this sign language that I have figured out, and Anshu responded with "You as well, comrade". In a situation where calling out our position to an enemy, this sign language could be a savior to agree on plans or other forms of agreements."

Among those who looked very curious about this sign language and how Amari made some rather good points in how it would be useful in situations where talking was impossible, was Capricorn Cyrus.

"Have you made a sign for Lady Athena?"

Smiling at the question, Amari made the symbol of Nike, by first drawing a straight line and then a circle on top, that would be seen on banners and other places here in the Sanctuary, which was quite natural as a symbol for Athena herself.

"I expect everyone to gather at my new office tomorrow, and that you all will learn this new sign language. Remember, it can prove useful no matter what you think of this idea right now."

Thankfully most seemed rather eager once they had gotten over the shock that he would be the new Captain of the Sanctuary guards, and Amari hoped that it would remain so. He was not afraid of challenges, but he did agree with Sade and Ishir:

People really needed to look past his poor hearing as his main trait, or thinking that the twins would never be able to get a legacy outside their father.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Of course, they had to talk with Fatima about how Amari not only had been chosen as the new Captain of the Sanctuary guards, but also about him and Nasrin agreeing to be in a relationship. But to the surprise of her two children, when Nasrin admitted the main reason why she would not be able to give her possible mother-in-law grandchildren, Fatima did not seem too upset.

"Not having any grandchildren from either Sade or Amari is not the end of the world, despite what most people may think in such situations. I want my babies to be happy with their partners, not feeling as if they must follow the norm by having a partner of the opposite gender and having children in a traditional marriage. If I want young children to dote upon as I grow older, there are always new orphans arriving to the Sanctuary who would need a mother figure."

Being married to Ayaan as a Saint of Athena, had opened a whole new world for Fatima about people who would be different. Yes, he had been only five years older than herself, but he had a completely different area of wisdom and experience which she, as his wife, had never known or even been thinking about prior to their first meeting because she honestly did not know any other life than living in a nomadic tribe and expected to follow the same traditional life as a wife and mother like all the other women and girls in the tribe.

"Thank you for accepting Nasrin, Mother."

The African widow smiled at her son as he bowed his head in gratitude. It clearly helped that Nasrin was not a random stranger showing up at the side of her son all of a sudden, but that she was a long-time friend of Sade and Lihua as well.

"I still expect you two, and those two ladies over there, to be wed in a proper wedding ceremony after a betrothal period with lots of witnesses in a few months, though. No rude gossip about my family members acting out of line for acceptable behavior!" Fatima suddenly said, pointing at the shocked Sade and Lihua next to her.

"Mom, can we not be allowed two separate ceremonies to be held over two days? Amari and I are already sharing our birthday every year and we became the Gemini Saint together eight years ago. We would like some major event in our lives to not be shared with the other twin for once, right, brother?"

Amari nodded to what Sade had just said.

"Yes, something to not be shared between us as twins for once, yes."

Well, that was a rather humble request from both mother and daughter that the two couples could agree to. Fatima would get two daughters-in-laws, and Sade and Amnari would get separate wedding days. Besides, it was not like the food and drinks served at such grand events would run out already the next day with careful planning.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Author note: Given that deafness and other hard of hearing disabilities are invisible, I think it would rather realistic that not everyone would understand why Amari may act different from the norm and how this would make him a victim of ableism, as well the risk of being a target for abusive relationships by people who thinks that they would be able to get away with being a abusive partner to him

Sade is a genderfluid lesbian who mostly idenitifies as female, while Amari is pansexual, meaning that he feels romantic, emotional, and/or sexual attraction to people regardless of their gender. This is why he feels drawn to Nasrin, having no problem with that she is a transwoman or that she was made a eunuch in Persia at a young age