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"Everyone knows you're out of your damn mind, but I didn't really think you were a fucking idiot!"
Before their voices cut through the noise, Bilquis could already feel them.
She scans the battlefield of gods and demigods alike; their respective soldiers still charging mercilessly at each other.
Until this moment she'd had no agency in this fight but now-- now she leaves the shadows, moves forward, if cautiously, drawn closer to the essence that fuels her very body. This she can use, this is her element.
Only what she's looking at upon dodging the most condensed part of the scuffle is not exactly what she'd expected to find even after all her time on this plane of the living.
A petite female - the reanimated corpse, Bilquis is certain, she'd heard hushed whispers about - is kneeling hunched over Mad Sweeney's form, furiously shoving at his shoulder.
Like her, he's filthy, too. Though unlike her, he's impaled by one of the daggers that sailed through the air mere moments ago. Sunk in barely below his rib cage much like the prophetic death everyone knows he owed the god of war.
The Leprechaun grunts as she rolls him none too gently onto his back.
"Jesus, dead wife, if this hadn't done it, you sure are gonna finish me off," he wheezes, his head lolling to the side a little.
"Shut up!" the woman, sneers. Her words sound poisonous, but Bilquis isn't fooled so quickly. "I'm trying to help."
She dislodges the blade and swears again when the wound starts gushing something fierce. It's impressive, really, that Mad Sweeney's eyes flicker down at the site and, as if he can't stop himself, still goes on to taunt her, "grand job you're doing."
"If you weren't such a fucking imbecile, taking that blow--" she snaps, but panic is seeping into her voice. "You know what, I'm going to rip you a new one later. We have to get out of here. Hold on." Her hands find purchase behind Mad Sweeney's arms, only for him to cough under the strain of his own weight, and she eases him back down. "Fuck. Help me, will you?"
He grinds out, "we both know I'm not going anywhere."
"Not with that attitude," she quips, and he huffs tiredly.
"You have to go."
Bilquis can sense the truth now, pure, palpable like everything she's able to read in his eyes - it's humming in the space around them like the halo Jesus dons - the one thing people sometimes won't admit to until their last breath is upon them.
"The hell I am," dead wife is saying at the same time he barks, "Laura! Will ya listen, just this once in your goddamn life!"
That only makes Laura's jaw set in determination. Bilquis wonders idly how such a slight, not even fully alive woman can glare with such defiance. She can smell her too now from a few feet away, the foul scent of death is undeniably present.
That can't override the draw, nothing could. It's magnetic, reaching for Bilquis as greedily as she seeks it out. It isn't often she feels this much of anything anymore unless, of course, she is the recipient of devotion. Much less here. This war rages only for petty reasons she refuses to hear reason of. All wars do. Though some claim it so, none could ever be fought in her name. Regardless of how one might feel about the way she consummates her worship, the act of violence is all but void of what her spirit seeks.
Laura jumps to her feet then, and for a moment it looks as if she's decided to take off, after all. Instead, she blocks another faceless soldier by tearing him in half mid air as if he's but a piece of paper. Her chest is heaving, although it seems doubtful that Laura truly has the need to breathe, perhaps she would even be crying if possible when dropping back to her knees beside the Leprechaun.
"No," she shakes her head, defeated and looks up, scanning the horizon for someone but evidently without luck. The battle has died down around them, and few are left standing who haven't fled the scene including the gods who'd started it. "Just-- take it back."
"What are you talking about?" asks Sweeney, but Laura has already grasped his hand in both of hers, guiding it to her chest. It seems like an embrace at first until the fabric on her shirt tears audibly, and he struggles against it, yelling. "No!"
Laura doesn't give an inch. "I'm done!" she cries. "You hear me? I'm-- dead! No one can change that," she holds up a hand to silence him, his wrist stays pinned in place by the other alone, closes her eyes. Her voice shakes, "You were right from the start, he doesn't want me anymore. He's gone, and I'm done."
"Look at me," Sweeney demands, the hulky man's strength fading along with the blood welling from beneath his sternum, yet he struggles to lift his head. Laura does as she's told through her cloudy retinas. "Stop, okay? Please. Shit," he makes a strangled, desperate noise as they lock eyes, tries his hand again and hisses when she still won't let up. "I'll only put it back 'cause-- a fucking idiot, I am."
Bilquis regrets that it's another confession wasted on someones dying breath.
And maybe it goes unheard because--
"Selfish prick!" The slow comprehension on Laura's features is quickly replaced by more rage. Which this time sounds a lot like sobbing. "Don't you dare! It's my choice anyway, isn't it? I want you to have it. So-- take it." She finishes her demand quietly - leans in to bring her chest that bit closer, angling her body just so. "Just look out for Shadow, okay?"
"Laura!" Sweeney warns, writhing under Laura's strength.
But he's too late. It's already over.
Laura is collapsing onto him, boneless - lifeless for real - while Sweeney cries out in pain of one kind and another Bilquis knows too well.
The sun coin - one to bear the force of life itself, she recognises, although her deity has always been the moon - tumbles out from between them, spins in a circle and comes to rest on the ground right by Sweeney's side as if faithfully awaiting to be claimed. He makes no move to grab for it. Maybe he can't - perhaps because he won't.
At last, Bilquis makes her presence known by retrieving the small coin herself, holds it delicately between two fingers to study; the warmth it emanates, at once tingling her skin.
"Fine sacrifice this makes for you." Sweeney heaves out from below her. His one arm is protectively slung over the body splayed out across his torso. They both understand what he's saying.
And Bilquis glows, giddy with the sensation - turns into a bright beacon of her own - no thanks to the coin.
She hums, "I had someone like her once, Mad Sweeney." Black liner, warm skin and hot lips come to mind.
Sweeney hacks up something akin to a bitter laugh. "My sincere condolences," he slurs, evidently never defeated enough not to run his mouth. But Bilquis smiles; feels as if she's floating with the headiness of magic in the air. "Make it quick."
She's still focused on the coin, considering, when the gold starts gleaming as though to approve of her next notion. "There are better sacrifices to be made in my name, you should know."
Streaks of tears cut a pattern down through the dirt caked on Sweeney's cheeks. "With all due respect," he gasps raggedly. "I don't want to fucking hear of your sexcapades."
Bilquis ignores him. Allows ancient intuition to guide her movements, feels the metal give and slice right through the centre until she's holding twin halves in her palm. They sing to each other instantly, a force of vitality and strength only framed by the energy emanating from her core.
"This is a gift you can never repay. A loan never to be settled with me or between each other," she explains, lowering herself beside the odd pair - delicately strokes Laura's hair from her dead eyes and muses. "It's always been a curse, Mad Sweeney and a blessing all at once. But for you, you'll be doomed to worship me for as long as you walk this plane; perhaps the ones beyond."
Mad Sweeney's breathing has grown shallow, his consciousness almost lost to the abyss. Bilquis shifts the arm still guarding both of them to bare the space that holds their hearts.
"May father Sun replenish broken skin," she chants emboldened by the energy flowing through her. She places a sliver of the coin onto Sweeney's wound, lays the other onto Laura's. "...return what's been taken from these forlorn souls." She lets her own magic bind the spell, observes as the metal burns, melting a path through both their rib cages, leaving planes of unmarred skin in its wake. She feels more alive than she has since the last ritual held on a blood-moon.
Sweeney merely pants, silently observing the air changing around Bilquis, watches as her heart supplements the rest to unite the power of rebirth with help from the dark side of the moon. It's a pretty spectacle, Bilquis thinks. His green eyes are glinting with new vigour already, Laura's skin replenishes in pink hues around her cheeks, lips plump like she's the princess in a fairytale.
"What--" Sweeney speaks clearly now, rises onto his elbows to look down, marvelling at Laura peacefully resting in his lap. She's breathing, her heart thudding a gentle rhythm once more.
"Don't ask questions to which you already have the answer, old king. You accepted death this time, embraced it even to spare someone else and instead you received new life," Bilquis stands. "For me, this won't ever be wasted; even if you wish to let it pass, but I have high hopes you won't deny yourself the benefits of this arrangement."
Sweeney laughs bitterly, "Aye. The years you'd been forgotten have deluded you. I can't receive what isn't freely given. That's no benefit for either of us, this ain't nothing but another curse placed upon me."
"It can be both, must I remind you?" Bilquis figures it's time to leave them, feels weightless like she's hovering above the ground. "You may not thank me now or ever but rest assured that you will serve me well. It's a fine bargain for me to be remembered by a creature such as yourself - part god, no less." She spares one last look at both of them, suddenly feels compelled to ease the way he stares at Laura, "she may come to recognise it one day."
"I don't care," he says sincerely, almost absent, apparently not satisfied until Laura wakes to trust that she's okay. But once the last word is past his lips, the magic takes, a dim glow flooding the skin inside both their chests. Pulling, pulling, pulling - reaching to connect.
And then she does. Laura jolts up ramrod straight, scans him over with a frown while he shrinks back comically, and she spits, "What the fuck, ginger minge!"
Bilquis turns, sniggering as she saunters away. She thinks, yeah, they have time to learn, centuries to fight and aeons to figure out this thing called love.