TW: Gore and implicit child abuse
Death doesn't discriminate, or so the saying goes.
Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps it is painfully neutral.
But that doesn't mean that Death cannot love.
Adora used to treasure that fact.
Once.
what a stupid little girl
Mother used to say that Gods do not love their half-blood children.
She would say it clutching a medallion that was neither hers nor Adora's, though she still valued it all the same.
She is wrong.
Father is fond of her, Adora is sure. After all, the small, soft kiss he bestows her on the forehead before disappearing is like a blessing and proof of his love. Because surely, he wouldn't have done that if he didn't love her.
Adora turns to her mother who stares at where Father stood but seconds ago, something complicated painted on her delicate features: too harsh to be love, yet too sorrowful to be hatred.
"Mother?" the little girl asks shyly. "Why did Father leave?"
Mother sighs. It is like she is holding the weight of the world, but her smile is gentle if sad when she cups Adora's cheek with a gentle hand. "Your Father has much to do, I'm afraid."
But
Their family is here.
"Too much to stay?" Adora asks.
The blonde pauses. "Yes. After all, Gods will be Gods." She says it with such grim acceptance too, as if she has said it a million times and it has never proven itself to be false.
"He isn't just a God, though," Adora cannot help but remark. She thinks of M. Avangarde who would drop anything if Lily were to call him. Who holds his daughter as if she is the most precious thing this world could hold. Adora wants that. She wants it so desperately, she could swallow the world whole. " He is my father, too."
"He is a God before he is your Father."
Adora blinks.
"Why can't he be both?"
"Oh, sweetheart," there's something that Adora cannot name in her Mother's voice. Something that almost sounds like pity. "He never wanted to be anything other than the God of Death."
Do not worry, child.
Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets
The first time Adora Delacour wants to claw her face off, her mother has her eyes muddled from memories and her tongue heavy with a golden drink that stinks.
She is five.
"Mother?" Adora asks, shuffling inside the drawing room, her music book clutched to her chest.
Her mother shifts almost lazily from where she is sprawled on the velvet couch. "What?"
There's a sting to the word, but Adora ignores it. She often does. "Could you play me a piece before bedtime?"
It is somewhat of a nightly routine for them, to sit at the piano's bench and play. Sometimes, it is some Baroque piece that has Mother smiling though her fingers danced across the keyboard as if they had a mind of their own. Other times, it is a Classical piece that, though elegant and refined in its melody, draws a frown on Céleste Delacour's angelic face.
"No."
Adora falters.
It isn't November.
And Mother had promised her a piece if she learned the violin.
Adora has done so with a single-minded focus so sharp that she did not realize she had worn out her fingers until she left crimson prints on her music sheet. Mother promised. "But-"
"DAMNIT, ADORA, I SAID NO."
Mother's outburst is sudden, searing in a way it has never been before. Like the roar of the ocean before it swallows you whole and breaks your bone in its crushing grip. Adora startles at that, and her music book falls onto the ground, some sheets flying hazardly around.
Yet, Adora pays them no mind.
Instead, her eyes are fixed on her Mother, whose face is twisted so angrily that it sours her beauty like spoiled milk, making the sweetness of her beauty seem almost poisonous.
"Don't look at me like that," Mother snaps, her voice like a whip, a warning that her daughter is deaf too. Adora stares, frozen in front of her mother's wrath, her breath caught in her throat like barbed wire.
In restrospect, it's a mistake.
Céleste Delacours throws her glass onto the wall.
It shatters.
Angrily.
Loudly.
"DO NOT LOOK AT ME WITH THOSE CURSED EYES!" Mother screams. The older woman almost throws herself up from the couch, a stumble or two in her steps as she stomps
over where the five-year-old stands.
Music sheets tear under her anger.
Adora flinches.
She has seen classmates with red cheeks and a handprint adorning their face. She has seen and heard the harsh smack that echoes when flesh meets flesh when children fail to live up to their parent's expectations.
Adora should have kept her mouth shut.
But Mother doesn't hit her.
In fact, Mother doesn't even look at her as she exits the room, like a ghost untethered and uncaring of those they leave behind.
Like Adora is nothing but a speck of dust on the floor. Like she cannot stand her own daughter, the one she birthed and raised. Like she is not her Mother's child.
"Sometimes," Mother's voice is quiet, but Adora has always had sharp ears and catches her words regardless. Or perhaps, Mother had wanted Adora to hear, if only a small part and it makes her voice carry. "Sometimes, I can't stand looking at you."
Adora stands in the dark room for some time, though she could not for the life of her tell you how much.
She sees nothing, neither the glass shards that litter the floor like they are pieces of her heart, nor the tremble of her hands that clutch at her nightgown.
But Adora Delacour does feel the tears that slip from her cheeks like small crystals.
They splatter on the dark wooden floor, shattering silently on impact.
One by one.
Mother later sneaks into Adora's room that very same night. She smells fresher, of roses and apples, and she is carefully gentle as she sits on Adora's bed. Her moves are slow and sure, her voice sweet and devoid of any of the anger she had worn so well not too long ago.
"I'm sorry, my darling," she whispers, brushing away some ebony strands from Adora's face. "I'm sorry."
Adora doesn't respond, doesn't answer.
Her eyes remain closed to spare her mother of the sapphire she is cursed with.
"You are so precious, Adora, I-" her mother inhales, as if searching for words when she has previously wielded them so well. "I never mean to hurt you. I love you, Adora. I do."
Adora opens her eyes at those words, lashes flutterring, and dried salt on her cheeks. "You don't hurt the people you love," the child repeats carefully, an echoe of Lily's words as she refuses to forgive Adora's mother's absence at yet another concert, furious in front of her friend's meekness.
Mother smiles at that, her emerald eyes glittering in the moonlight. Her smile trembles. "I know."
"Do - do you hate my eyes so much?"
So much that you refuse to look at me?
"I don't hate them," Adora must look skeptical because Mother chuckles lightly before tilting her chin up so that emerald meets sapphire. "They simply remind me of people."
Who are they to warrant such a strong reaction?
"What kind of people?"
"One of the best people in the world and one of the worst." A thumb brushes Adora's cheekbone. "You have his smile. Derek's smile."
Gone is her mother's anger; gone is her sweetness.
At the name of Derek, Céleste Delacour is neither human nor mother.
Simply grief that is somehow alive.
"Uncle Derek?" Adora asks.
"That's right. My twin brother."
Adora has heard of that man often. Mother often talks of him as if he was a God, someone so good and pure, the world took him for its own before Mother could say goodbye.
"I loved him so much that when I lost him, I lost half of myself. I have never gotten it back. It's like the world has died. That's how much I loved him."
She talks as if she is but a corpse just waiting to rot. As if her love has poisoned her from within .
Adora doesn't dare to ask more, doesn't dare to make her mother cry because she wouldn't know what to do then. "What about the other?" she asks instead.
Instantly, Mother shifts. Her grief has twisted at Adora's question, sharpened into a hateful grimace. "Your grandfather. You have his eyes. Both you and Derek."
Adora wonders if her mother would be happier if she didn't have those eyes. If they were emeralds like hers or perhaps similar to her Father's though she does not know what he looks like.
"Is he dead too?"
"I wish. But no, he isn't one to simply die, unfortunately."
Mother has never been outright cruel till now.
"Who is he?"
Mother's lips twist into a sneer. "The God of the Sun and Music," she spits out.
Adora's eyes widen and she shifts closer to her mother, as if forgetting the welts she wears under her skin from her latest outburst. As the Delacour daughter, she is well read and Mother has always made sure she knew her mythology. "Isn't he just a myth?"
"No. Gods exist, but never call their names for they will hear it."
"Did—" Adora hesitates, chewing her bottom lip. She has never seen her Father, though his absence is felt keenly. "Did he love you?"
Love her like Adora wants to be loved?
One could argue that Adora is already loved—by her mother and by her best friend.
But Adora is greedy, starved, and yearning for love. It is an inherited thing, a ravenous beast
that roams in her chest, its stomach neverending.
Mother laughs at that, bitter and knowing. "Yes. Yes, he did love us. And it was the greatest curse of all."
The five-year-old falters at that. "Isn't love a good thing?"
"Never when it comes from a God. Remember this, Adora. He who the gods love dies. Because the Gods love nothing more than a tragedy with wings that burn and innocents that fall."
It is a warning, at least she thinks it is. Yet Adora pays it no heed.
Perhaps it is because she is a child when she is first told never to trust love.
Or perhaps, it is because Adora Delacour would bleed for anything as long as it loved her right.
Mother, should I blame you for letting me glimpse at the bitterness you hold against the
world?
For gifting me venom when I should have been a child?
Or should I thank you?
For not allowing me to live in a lie.
Contrary to Mother's expectations, Father comes and visits them when he can.
He's always dressed in dark colors, contrasting sharply with their sunlit manor filled with white and golden lining. Often, he comes, his sword in his hands and dressed in a long cape.
Once Father has let Adora try it on.
"Woah," Adora breathes, twirling in front of the mirror, eyes wide as she catches sight of the fabric gliding around her like wings. The cape, black and warm, has resized itself as Father draped it over her shoulders, shortening its length till it only brushes the floor instead of swallowing Adora whole in its dark fabric.
It fits her well.
As if it has always been meant for Adora's.
Mother, however, is far from pleased at the sight. If anything, there are few things other than anger and bitterness in her heart whenever the God comes.
"Thanatos," she grits out, arms crossed and a glare in her eyes.
"Céleste," Father responds calmly.
They stand apart. Gold and Black that will never touch.
Adora sometimes wonders how she came to be. She has seen the pictures, though Mother will never know lest she throws them into the fire and burn away any memory of happiness found within a God's arms.
Them sitting at the piano, shoulders pressed together.
Them watching a movie, Mother's feet on his lap.
It is different now.
Now, they are fire and water that refuse to collide, the sun and the moon unwilling to share the same sky.
"You shouldn't make her try on Godly things. Who knows how it would affect her?" Mother scolds.
Father scoffs. "She is my daughter. Do not worry uselessly. It is her birthright to drape herself with the silks of the Underworld. The Underworld would never harm its own blood."
"Yet monsters still hunt us both."
"Such is the fates of half-bloods."
Adora sometimes thinks of the shadows that dog her footsteps, monsters with blood and rot in their breaths, endlessly searching for those like her. It is almost funny to hear Father brush off such a threat, almost as if talking about something as trivial as the weather.
"You could protect her." Mother's voice breaks, a dissonant note among the melody that is her voice, yet Father is not moved.
"It is not my place."
"So, then tell me why I should allow you anywhere near us?"
Father sneers. It is an ugly thing on his sharp, aristocratic features. "Try to take my daughter from me, Céleste Delacour, and I will send you to Tartarus."
Mother laughs bitterly. She points a manicured finger at the man she once fell asleep on as if it were a dagger that would draw blood. "And here I thought you said Death was supposed to be neutral."
"It is."
"Spare me your lies, Thanatos," the older woman snaps, snatching the cloak from Adora's small frame, hissing as frost bites at her fingers almost angrily. "We are not a passing entertainment for your immortal eyes."
Of course not.
They are his family.
But Thanatos, God of Death, Reaper of Souls, does not deny her claim.
Instead, silence is their only answer as Father leaves once more, leaving the place colder and darker than before.
"If you ask me, your parents sound complicated," Lily remarks from her seat on the velvet couch. As she continues, the blonde looks up from the flower crown she is crafting. "I thought mothers and fathers were supposed to love each other."
"How do you even know if it's love?" Adora asks, fingers carefully threading the vines together into a small braid.
There's a small pause in which the two little girls look at each other, sapphire eyes clouded with confusion, before they both snap their gazes at their governess, who smiles indulgently from her own seat.
"Aren't you two too young to ask that of me?" Ms. Claire asks lightly.
Adora shakes her head. "We're not too young!" she protests hotly.
"We're ten!" Lily adds in support.
Ms. Claire laughs once more. She has bells for a laugh and a pretty smile. "Love can be found in the most uncommon places," she starts, wistful. "It is the most beautiful feeling in the world, and I am sure your parents love each other and you very much. After all-"
"I thought we hired you to educate and watch over our daughters, Ms. Claire. Not fill their heads with pretty lies and useless things." a voice interrupts.
Ms. Claire pales. "Madam Delacour," she says, standing up abruptly and respectfully lowering her head.
Lily sends a glance to Adora as if worried.
"They were simply asking me of love, Madam."
Mother tilts her head, a ruby earring dangling to the side, shining richly in the afternoon sun.
"And you thought your answer to be appropriate?"
"Madam, love is-"
"My daughter is heiress of the Delacour family and wealth," Mother intones. "Lily is the sole daughter of the Avangarde family. You were hired to teach them etiquette and supervise their time together. Not make them naive to the way of the world."
"Aunt Céleste," Lily pipes up. Adora glances at her, shaking her head, trying to make her friend listen to reason and not try to argue with her mother. But Lily remains undeterred.
"What's so wrong with talking about love? My parents always say we have to stay true to our heart and that to love is the greatest skill of them all."
"Of course, they do. Tell me, Lily, does your father still have those monthly business meetings of his in Germany?"
"Yes!" Lily smiles brightly. "He brings me chocolate every time and Mother, a new gown."
Mother smiles sardonically. "I'm sure. Now, come Adora."
Once they are in the car, Mother sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Oh, to be so naive," she whispers. She then turns to Adora. "You do know never to trust love, right?"
"Of course, Mother," Adora reassures her with a gentle smile. It is the right, the only answer she can give, after all.
"Of course," Mother repeats. She looks proud as she takes in her daughter, more divine than most half blood, more darkness than she would have hoped, but alas. "You are my daughter, after all."
The fall of the Avangarde family happens a year later in May.
Well, it is not a fall per se, yet the media calls it so, eyes greedy and desperate for whatever more information they can find to rub callous salt inside the family's wounds.
"Snakes, all of them," Mother sneered, throwing a gossip magazine on the floor in disgust.
On the front cover, M. Avangarde's betrayal is sprawled for all to see.
The headlines are cruel and imaginative, too.
This Century's Love Affair
Love Hidden in Germany
The Avangarde Family remains silent in front of their patriarch's affair
When Money and Love Are Not Enough
How ironic, Adora finds, how they use the word love in such event, in the wrecking and destruction of a family that used to smile so brightly at each other. She worries for her best friend too, for how she will react as her dreams of happily ever after crumble before her very eyes, but she realizes soon enough there's no reason to worry.
Lily runs away from her manor, seeking to escape the loud fights her parents start daily. If her manor had been loud in laughter and lighted with love, now, it has grown an angry and bitter place. She comes to Adora's manor with eyes red from tears and half of her jewelry gone.
"Father would give me those whenever he came back from Germany," Lily sniffles, a hand clutching at a beautiful bracelet so tightly her knuckles are white, and Adora fears that she will bleed. "Because he couldn't stop thinking of me. Because he loves me so much, he wants to give me the world."
Adora cannot speak; the words die like ashes on her tongue.
What can she say?
That she is sorry?
M. Avangarde is many things, yet Adora truly believes he has not lied when he claimed to love his precious daughter.
"He does love you," she whispers. The black-haired girl thinks of the smiles and kisses M. Avangarde gifted his daughter, his quiet pride during piano concerts, or how he would always try and find time to spend with her. Adora whispers that reassurance as if a balm to Lily's wound, a string that keeps her from simply fading.
"Love?" Lily scoffs. "What a joke."
It is odd, almost jarring, to hear the blonde say so, not when she is the romantic one between them, the one so loved by her parents that she never had to doubt it.
"You used to believe in love." Adora cannot help but muse.
Lily snorts. Though her eyes are bright with unshed tears and anger, she does manage a soft smile for the Delacour heiress. "I should have been more like you."
Yet, Adora cannot smile back.
after all, when it comes to love, she isn't the greatest beggar of all.
Though, no one really knows.
What would Mother say if she knew?
Knew that her half-blood daughter wished her parents loved her enough to stay, to cherish her. Knew that even if love was the poison she said it was, Adora would still swallow it whole.
In face of her silence, Lily continues, throwing yet another necklace in the pile to donate.
"Father said he never could let go of his first love. That he loved her too much, he could not bear it." Her voice then trembles as she turns to Adora, no longer Lily Avangarde, but Adora's greatest friend who wears her heart on her sleeve and who cries while watching the Lion King. "He could have stopped for me. For our family. He just didn't- didn't love me enough to."
Two days later, as Adora and Lily sneak over the forest that borders the Delacour's estate, they encounter stray horses. As it turns out, they are flesh-eating horses.
Adora discovers it as teeth tear her flesh apart while Lily, not too far from her, wails in agony as another horse gnaws slowly at her arm, or at the very least, the mess of torn skin and muscle and blood that remains.
father fatherfatherfather fatherfatherplease father i'mbeggingyou father
Another horse creeps closer.
Adora cries.
please
It reaches Lily first.
The blonde - Adora's best friend - turns her face towards Adora, blood on her cheek, tears in her eyes.
i don't want to die, i don't want us to die
Lily manages a trembling, frail smile.
"I- lo-ve you," she chokes out.
FATHER PLEASE
Adora tries to reach out, to do anything because she is half divine and it should count for something, it should-
"Lily-"
Lily Avangarde's head is ripped away.
Loudly.
Messily.
And Adora screams before her head is ripped away, too.
Adora Delacour wakes up in a pool of blood.
Not too far, Lily's unseeing eyes stare at her, sapphire dulled and muddled in death, her mouth opened in a silent scream.
It is the first time that Adora dies.
We used to think that the world was ours to take.
Ours to live in.
What foolish little girls we were.
Foolish, clever little girls who thought they were born to be cherished,
never realizing they were only meant to be destroyed.
AUTHOR NOTE:
HII, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Thank you so much for the attention and support given to it, it's so appreciated! Don't be shy to let me know your thoughts ;)
Lots of love, Daph