Thebes probably didn't deserve saving.
Megara had lived there for seventeen years of unending misery, and now she lay in the darkness of her bedroom, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rasps of her own breathing. That morning, she'd wandered back from trying to convince a centaur to steal her Lethe water from the Underworld to no avail. The scamp had run off with her money, and though she knew he'd gone to Athens, it was equally certain that she lacked the requisite muscle to retrieve either her money or the amphora. Assuming he'd gotten her one.
Stupid. Fruitless.
While her brothers had been relieved to see her return, King Eteocles had punished her harshly for running away from school. Half her face and her whole throat were still in pain, but at least she was alone. The war was imminent.
The whole mess of Thebes would be pillaged and flattened in a matter of days.
If Cadmus had known his people would last only a few generations after settling in Thebes, he would've taken his people back to Phonecian lands.
Someone knocked at her door, but Megara closed her eyes to ignore it. Couldn't anyone leave her in peace? The armies would arrive soon, and then everyone would be dead. Why couldn't she pass her last few days in peace?
"Meg?" It was Ismene. The only sane child of Oedipus.
"Malaka," she sighed aloud and rolled out of bed. "What do you want?"
Ismene opened the door a crack and peeked through. "Hey… Are you… feeling any better?"
"What do you think? My face hurts, your big brother almost killed me, and half the family won't talk to me because I wouldn't let Adonis paw at me."
Her cousin bowed her head and entered Megara's room carrying a jar, a bowl, and a linen towel. "I know I'm pretty useless around here, but I wanted to try and apologize for the way people have been acting around here."
"You really don't have to do that," Megara sighed. "You'll get in trouble for talking to me. I'm social poison."
"You're family." Ismene knelt at Megara's bedside and poured some fragrant water into the bowl, then dipped the linen towel in it. "This is for your face… It should bring the swelling down from where you got hit."
"What difference will that make?" Megara snapped.
Ismene flinched. "I thought… maybe it would make a difference that someone cared to address it. The boys are all focused on the war, but… you're still here."
"Aren't you afraid of the war? You know what invaders do to princesses. Even if Polynikes is your brother, that hasn't stopped him."
"No matter what's happening out there, we have to be decent people in here," Ismene said.
"For what? None of that gets us anywhere," Megara said. "All we do is suffer."
"I know that, but maybe in the Underworld, we'll see that it all paid off because we'll have an easier time there."
Megara considered the orchard said to grow in the Underworld, where shades supposedly wandered and ate of the fruits. "Our fate is to be just like everyone else in death. There's no reward for being decent, Issie. But… I still appreciate it."
Ismene wadded up the linen cloth and offered it to Megara. "They're serving dinner soon. I know you're not invited, but I could bring you something."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're just upset. You always get like this when you're upset."
"If I did, I'd be dead by now," Megara pointed out.
"Okay, but…" Ismene sighed heavily. "I wish Thebes had a hero. You know there are other city-states that have more than one hero? And they don't even really need them, but we do!"
"There's no hero who can fix this." Megara pressed the linen to her face and sighed in relief as the inflamed skin was soothed. "You know, Issie, there are people who called your father a hero. And yet, somehow, you're the only person in your family who's worth anything."
"Shh…" Ismene checked over her shoulder toward the door. "Meg, we can't say things like that."
"Why not? All of us are going to die soon. This is the perfect time to say what needs saying."
Tears collected along Ismene's cheekbones. "Meg, we can't lose hope. The gods might save us. Maybe Polynikes will change his mind! We can still have hope."
"There's a reason Hope came out of Pandora's box," Megara said. "It's one last cruelty of the gods to make us believe we have anything to look forward to."
Ismene leaned her brow against the bed and began to weep openly. "I just… it's all too much, Meg! How can you stand it? Why hasn't it broken you?"
Megara bit her lip. This wasn't the intended outcome. She rubbed her cousin's back. "It's just because I accepted our lot. I tried to run off and change things, but I got ripped off by a centaur. We're Thebans, honey. We're nothing but a joke to the rest of Greece. We have our dignity, and we love our artistic expression, but we've always been waiting for someone to wipe us out. We don't get heroes without a massive reversal of fortune to ruin the whole thing. Nobody's coming to save us."
In a remarkable turn of events, not one of the things she'd said to her cousin went a single cubit in the direction of cheering her up.
Ismene jumped up from the ground and raced out of the room.
Megara was left in the shadows, wondering if she ought to have offered Ismene false hope or if the blunt approach would help her resign herself and ultimately deal with the fate coming for them in a better way.
She climbed back into bed and pressed the linen against her face. She didn't bother with dinner, only occasionally dabbing the linen back into the water so she could press it back against her skin.
It was true that no mortal heroes bothered with Greece. It would take a miracle from some highly invested god to make a difference, but she couldn't think of which one it would be.
Zeus had caused the very existence of this place with his selfish bull-headedness. Well, bull-everythingness.
Hera wasn't the type to intervene in war.
Aphrodite had nothing to do with her family. She was probably too embarrassed by the Oedipus incident.
Athena… well, it wasn't as if there were trained soldiers or generals in Thebes, so who would she direct or influence?
Bacchus had once been Dionysus, their patron deity who came through Zeus and the very bloodline of Cadmus. But he hadn't done anything useful in decades.
Ares was the whole reason for this war.
There was that new one. They'd opened a sanctuary to him not too long ago. He was about as old as she was… What was that name again? Hercules.
He was a son of Zeus, but she couldn't exactly hold that against him. Wasn't he the god of… athletes?
Megara went to sleep, alternating between the view of Ismene's tears and the speculations on what Hercules even did.
She woke at the witching hour to shouts and a scuffle.
Megara rolled back out of bed, holding her blanket around herself, and peeked out into the hallway through a sliver of an open door.
Haemon was at it again. Her middle brother had a temper on him. "No more excuses!" he roared. "This is all your fault! You don't get to put this on anyone else!"
Eteocles and a few loyal guardsmen were no match for one Haemon. If only Haemon could be a hero of Thebes. He slammed Eteocles to the wall and started choking him with one forearm while beating off a couple of other guardsmen.
"We're all going to die because you're a selfish power grabber!" Haemon snarled at their cousin.
The guards' combined power finally dragged Haemon off Eteocles, but that didn't stop the conflict.
"This throne is my rightful place!" Eteocles shouted back. "Polynikes never deserved to reign as I do!"
"Neither of you should be king!" Haemon shouted back. More guards flooded the courtyard to aid in the process of subduing Haemon.
This was the mess their family was damned to. Was this what Ares always wanted?
Megara shut her eyes against the ongoing conflict as more and more people assembled in the courtyard. She'd been hit and screamed at so often that it was barely an inconvenience, but now that there were so many people involved, it was starting to look like the war had already landed at their palace.
Ismene appeared at a door on the opposite side of the courtyard, only for Antigone to rush out of that same door and leave her alone.
While her parents had been alive, Ismene had been relatively sheltered. They'd seen the softness in her and hadn't punished her for it. Now, she would die with the rest of them or face the indignities of the conquered woman.
She wasn't ready for it.
Someone had always been there in time to save her from it.
Not like Megara.
Her brothers had been away too often, and her parents never cared when others "disciplined" their daughters.
There was time to think of herself later. By which she meant she never would. She had to help Ismene, or nobody ever would.
While everyone was still distracted by this late-night brawl, Megara slipped on her sandals, tied some lavender incense into her girdle, and rushed out of the palace.
Thebes was full of its usual miseries, but the palace was fairly close to the temple district. After a few hours of pausing in shadowed alcoves to rest, the sun rose over the condemned city. She found the temple of Zeus by Apollo's light and tiptoed onto its grounds.
Priests were offering tireless prayers to their god. Nobody noticed a teenage girl slipping her way through the temple's grounds toward the sanctuary of Hercules.
It consisted of a circular building surrounded by Doric columns that depicted the young god in feats of strength.
She eased its door open and found it empty except for an impressive statue of Zeus's son. She wondered if the statues were designed by the gods themselves or if the fact that he was a young bachelor god made his statue look so… human.
She'd seen the temple of Zeus before, but she'd never felt like she could have a conversation with him. Hercules looked as if he were a friendly teenage guy who might invite you to the Speedy Pita.
That made it easier for him to burn the incense.
She didn't know how to pray, and really, she was too tired to think clearly. Did it really matter in the end? Either he'd agree or refuse, but there was so little hope that he would do it, and the words would hardly make a difference.
Her eyes wandered the sanctuary for inspiration. A few barbells and a weight bench decorated the sanctuary, along with garlands and trophies bearing his name. Had he earned them, or were they waiting to go out as prizes for contests that had yet to take place?
Should she talk to him as if he were an athlete? Play on his need to win? Maybe he'd like to defeat his uncle Ares in a fight that everyone else would think impossible.
If she had more faith, this would be easier, but at least she could represent Ismene's faith. She might be the last person in Thebes who remembered how to have hope, but Megara was the last one who could take action.