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“You’d think we’d run into each other more often,” Zagreus says casually, spinning Gigaros loosely between his hands, neither his feet nor the end of the spear reaching the ground from where he sits atop a short wall. There’s no threat in it. It’s merely one of the dozens of ways he fidgets. Chronos has seen it a hundred times. (Has never seen it once.) “I mean, considering our respective tasks. I’m in Elysium all the time, but we never seem to cross paths.”
Chronos holds his hands behind his back and does not manifest his scythe. He stands firmly, but not too proudly. He’s eternally reminding himself not to let his pride show. It’s what got him into this mess, after all. Humility will be his savior.
Humility and necessity.
“The shades keep me quite busy with their requests.” Chronos can’t quite bring himself to meet his grandson’s eyes. It isn’t like when he meets with Melinoë in the space between Erebus and Oceanus. There, he always tries to look directly at her. To see if he can find a trace of the girl he remembers, who loved him with the purity and wholeness of a child.
It isn’t there, obviously. It never will be. Everything good that ever happened to him is nothing more than a half-written memory, lost between a few grains of sand slipping through the hourglass. That sweet girl does not exist. There is nothing for Melinoë to remember, for there is nothing she has forgotten. Perhaps it would be better if he forgot.
But then he would not love her, and he would not help her, and there would be no need for him. His sons and their sisters keep him only for the sake of usefulness and as a favor to his grandchildren’s sentimentality. His grandson’s, at least. He doesn’t know if anyone thinks Melinoë actually cares for him. He hopes they do, both because it will keep him safe and because it will mean that none of them understand her. If they do not understand her, they cannot truly love her. If they cannot truly love her, they cannot steal her away from him.
Not that she can be stolen. Not that he has even the vaguest claim over her. It is a remnant of the time-which-wasn’t. A fear that someday, someone would convince his dear girl to turn from him, and he would lose that which he held most precious.
Here, now, in this time-which-is, he has nothing at all to hold. He’s even given up his timepiece, as though a gift will do anything to create even a facsimile of what he longs for.
“Yeah, I’m fairly busy too.” Zagreus grins when Chronos jolts back to the present moment. He is Time. He should not be so easily lost in his own thoughts. “Still, you’d imagine we’d have seen each other once or twice. Paradise is only so big. The only way we could go this long without so much as a glimpse is if we were avoiding each other.”
Chronos allows himself the brief reprieve of a slightly too long blink. “If you are trying to make a point, you may as well get to it.”
“Why are you avoiding me, grandfather?” Zagreus sets Gigaros down, gently leaning it against the wall. His voice is as soft as the Elysium grass. Too perfect. Too sweet. Too unreal.
It would be so much easier if Zagreus did not remember.
The sound of laughter echoes through the Crossroads and into her tent, and that—that’s very odd. It isn’t that the Crossroads are a dismal place, but they also aren’t an exuberant one. It is difficult to be Unseen if one can be heard from a distance.
The oddity is explained when she darts from her tent and sees a flash of red-gold-flame that strikes at her heart with its familiarity.
“Zagreus!” She stops in front of him, shock and joy and something less identifiable welling in her chest. “How are you here?”
Zagreus shrugs, moving the whole of his upper body. It’s one of the first things she noticed about him. Even as nothing more than a reflection in the mirror, he’s so physical. “I thought about what you said in the arena, about us never seeing each other outside of fights to the death, and I figured that was worth changing. I asked around, and once I heard that all children of Nyx are welcome in this place, the solution seemed obvious.”
“Well, yes, all of Night’s children are welcome in the crossroads.” That unidentifiable thing makes itself known again, tense and unpleasant behind her ribs. “Though I was not under the impression that you would qualify as such.”
How else to phrase ‘are you trying to lie to your full-blooded sister right now, and do you really think I’ll have your back if anyone tries to call you on it’?
Zagreus laughs, and the sound is so natural, like he’s meant for doing it. Like he’s meant for happiness and ease and noise, for things that have never filled Melinoë's home. Perhaps they filled his. “I may not be Nyx’s child by blood, but she did raise me. She’s at least as much my mother as the one you and I share. And your witchly magicks must agree, or else I doubt I would’ve been able to find this place.”
“I…suppose that makes sense.” Melinoë can taste the bitterness in her own words, but she lets it pass. She has learned well from Nemesis. If a thing is to last, it cannot be too good or too bad. There must be a balance. “It’s good to see you, in any case.”
Mostly true. No, it’s entirely true. It’s always good to see her brother. It’s just…always something else, too, and the something else is louder now that he’s in the Crossroads. In her home. In the place which has always been hers. Where she has always known who she needs to be.
She’s never quite sure who she is when she’s with Zagreus. It’s easier to manage that when she knows she’ll be walking into an encounter. Taking a contract and fighting him is so much simpler than seeing him splattered like too-bright paint across the quiet and calm space of her life.
“It’s good to see you too, Melinoë.” Zagreus smiles gently. Too gently. This is a place of rest, yes, but it is also a place of necessity.
He doesn’t belong, Melinoë thinks, and barely keeps her expression steady. It’s an unkind thought. She has it anyway.
“Can we talk?”
“Why are you here, dear boy?” Chronos sounds nearly as exhausted as he feels. He would hide it better, or at least care more to try, if this were anyone other than Zagreus.
Flame-licked feet kick backwards against stone. Chronos used to watch two pairs of those feet swing back and forth from the boughs of pomegranate trees, from Cerberus’s back, from the rafters that little gorgon frequented. Zagreus loved her. Chronos can’t remember her name. What could he possibly bring to his grandson’s life if he cannot manage even that much?
Zagreus’s voice is low, almost uncertain. “I wasn’t sure if you’d still call me that. It seems like you’re trying to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“It didn’t.” Chronos does not want to be cruel. Not to this boy, who showed him kindness when it only made his own life harder. He wishes so badly that Zagreus had even a sliver of cruelty in his heart. Anything to protect him—to protect them both. “Nothing happened. We saw a flicker of possibility. Nothing more.”
“It was real, though.” Zagreus isn’t desperate, isn’t trying to convince one or both of them. He sounds out the impossible and pronounces it as simple fact. “You wouldn’t be different if it didn’t matter.”
Melinoë leads him to the fountain which honors their father. Luckily Icarus is out on a flight. He would give them their privacy, she knows, but he would also see more in her than she wants to explain.
Zagreus runs a hand over some of the stonework. “You always did like spending time in mother’s garden. I’m not surprised you have one here, as well.”
“She wasn’t me, you know.” Melinoë’s almost startled by her own voice. She didn’t intend to say that, exactly, but perhaps that’s all the more proof that it needs to be said. “The sister you remember growing up with in the House, with Chronos babysitting and playing games…she isn’t me. You don’t know the person I am in this Time.”
It’s as though Zagreus’s entire being shifts. His easy humor slips like a shawl falling down his shoulders, still visible, but no longer hiding what’s beneath. The dancing light in his eyes turns serious. For the first time, Melinoë sees a greater resemblance between them.
“I know you’re right. I really do, I swear.” He glances away and shoves at the laurels in his hair, adjusting them even though she can’t see any issues with how they lie. “Trust me, mother and father have both made it abundantly clear that they don’t consider the Time that grandfather and I recall to be worth much. And even if it does mean something, of course you’re not the same. Your life has been so different.”
Melinoë has spent her whole life training to be brave. This is why she asks the question, even though she is terrified of the answer. “Why are you here, Zagreus?”
“Fine. It meant something.” Chronos meets his grandson’s eyes. They’re sad. They’re hopeful. They’re familiar and brand new. “It’s still over now. There is nothing between us.”
“I don’t believe that.” Zagreus blazes brighter than the flames on his head or his feet. He is a force unto himself. So is his sister. They’re wonderful. Chronos knows that his love is the worst gift he could ever offer either of them.
They make it so hard not to love them anyway.
“What do you want from me?” It’s such a dangerous question, when Chronos knows he is powerless to refuse this boy a single thing. He is as much at his grandson’s mercy as he was beneath the House, still pulling himself together a piece at a time.
Zagreus shrugs one shoulder, something wistful in him. “Just a bit of time together would be nice, every once in a while. I still want you to be a part of my family, you know.”
Chronos laughs. His grandchildren have both always been so good at making him laugh. “I don’t suppose you could ask for something easier? Perhaps the chariots of the sun and moon, or every star in the sky?”
“I don’t think Selene would take well to that.” Zagreus smiles, something in him blooming at even this slightly positive response. Gods, but Chronos forgets so much. He knows the story of this boy’s life.
Of course he wants Chronos to try. How foolish not to see it sooner.
“You’re quite right, as usual.” The thought of what could happen is more frightening than imminent undoing. He should know. “I suppose I can make time for you, in between the demands of all these shades.”
The blooming smile becomes a grin, brighter than all the parts of Tartarus he tried to gild in his image. “That’s all I ask.”
It’s not quite true, but Chronos knows it isn’t a lie. Zagreus likely does not realize how much he asks for. He spares a moment to pity those who watched this boy grow up. They must have realized all too quickly that their lives were doomed to change in impossible ways.
Then again, it’s hard to regret his own changes, painful as they might be. Chronos cannot fathom how it happened, but somehow all of the blood of gods and titans came together to make a pair of siblings with something good at their very core.
It is better than any of them could ever dare to deserve.
“I missed you.” Zagreus swallows, but he doesn’t look away from her. He’s brave, Melinoë realizes. As brave as her. Maybe more.
She remembers all the stories she heard of him. He fought out of the Underworld just for the chance at seeing his mother. He risked the wrath of every Olympian and Chthonic god. He died dozens of times. He bled and broke his bones and there was no returning to shadow, just the embrace of the Styx to rock him back to a House which was more prison than home.
She’d asked Nemesis about him, years ago. Surely Nemesis would have a tale or two of being pulled to correct his missteps. Whether she can do anything about it is another thing entirely, when it comes to the pride and errors of gods, but Nemesis always knows when she should be called.
But Nemesis knew nothing of Zagreus, save for the grip of his sword.
Whatever else might be true of your brother, he was never at risk of having too much of a good thing.
Melinoë nearly chokes on her words. “I missed you too, brother.”
I used to pretend to talk to you, she doesn’t say. I would lie down and imagine the sound of your voice while I tried to sleep. When I named Frinos, I wondered what you might think. If you would choose something else, instead. If you would like my little life, carved out in this place.
Zagreus reaches out his hand, palm up, offering something to her that Melinoë does not know how to receive. “We don’t have to keep missing each other. At least not all the time.”
He’s right. She knows he is, even if he makes it sound simpler than it could possibly be in reality.
Still, she is brave. She has spent all her life trying to be brave.
“Okay.” She takes his hand.
Maybe she should expect it when he pulls her into a tight hug. She doesn’t, because no one has ever done that to her, not like this. It makes her laugh. He makes her laugh. She remembers what he said, once, about Chronos making her laugh so much in that other Time.
She wonders if that might be true in this Time as well. It seems impossible, but here, held in her brother’s arm’s, the impossible seems just about real enough to touch.