TWICE-BLESSED.

THE CHORUS WELCOMES THE TWICE-BLESSED.

❝ the songs of fortune and victory die out upon the stricken scales, and so see the judgement of retribution herself upon the distant shores. no eidolon will fool her eye, and no god can shield you from her wrath. from these ashes, may you be forged anew, o damned shade, or be cast into the pit itself. ❞

          “Forgive me for my poor choice of words,” Zayyan responds with a melodramatic sigh, as they proceeded with the same rapport  once customary of their college dynamic. “Brooding is sexy. Sulking does not require the same level of commitment. That, is therefore, unsexy.” The true differences between the two were lost long ago, but that didn’t stop Zayyan in his semi-serious attempts at analysis.  “Do you really think I’d ever leave you astray?” Zayyan inquires with narrowed eyes, looking back at Victor to ensure this was the same Victor who’d accompanied him on more coffee runs than he could ever count. “You know I don’t fuck around when it comes to coffee.” 

          He turns his attention back to the road as the arrive closer to their destination, the divine smells of the shop greeting them upon their arrival. “There’s little you can do to convince me that you genuinely enjoy black coffee, and that it’s not purely a way to intensify the effects of your brooding.” As Zayyan holds the door open to Bia’s Coffee Pot, he allows for his usual greeting to the owner Bia, (who supposedly bore not relation to the goddess), as well as their orders, before gesturing to where he believed the best booth location for brooding was. “Here it is. In all it’s glory,” he announces in introduction, while simultaneously sinking lower and lower into the plush booth.

“I enjoy black coffee. It happens,” he lies, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t enjoy it as much as he says, but it’s the cheapest thing on the menu and it keeps him sharp. Besides, it works with the whole Angel-esque sexy brooding image. The way his life was made, all of it feels manufactured. From the way he looks to the way he walks, all of it feels like a target, or a beacon. His eyes scrape over the store, only to be sidetracked by the scent of freshly-brewed coffee. The one true love of his life, if he were to say so.

andy did not consider herself to be the same girl who fled camp years prior, who packed her life away and ran off in the dead of night with little more than a good-bye. she had left her camp life behind, had sloughed that girl from her shoulders like a coat that no longer fit. she had changed —of course she had, nearly a decade had passed. but despite all that, despite all her years, despite all the work she had done, andromache’s temper was a beast she had yet to mollify.

“ oh fuck right off with that victor! do you need a history lesson or something? ” she shot back, losing all softness, all apology. andy was never one to hide her anger beneath a stony face or an amicable smile — she showed her cards at the slightest movement: eyebrows knitted, face contorted in anger. “ or did you conveniently forget that you were the one that pulled the plug on us, not me. ” andy clasps her hands together in mock piety. “and i am so sorry i didn’t respond to your messages vic. i’m sorry that i didn’t reply to the pitying, salt in the wound bullshit from the guy that dumped me. excuse me for trying to move on. ”

“ and yeah! yeah, i did disappear. camp sucked for me. and i sure as shit didn’t win any brownie points for publically breaking up with the golden boy of camp tiber. so i left, and i’d do it again, a thousand times over. and if i wasn’t literally compelled to be here by the gods, i’d have kept it that way. so you want to keep things civil? fine by me. i’m not losing anything. ”

“ oh, all good with me, vic. ” andy seethed between gritted teeth. “ i don’t have anything left to say to you.  ”

•

Victor does not speak. Only remembers. It stings, of course, returning to the scene of the crime, painting the picture to a crowd that only reels in hatred. This isn’t working. She was afraid, skittish, and he thought that the question would snap her back to reality, ice-cold water to the situation. Maybe they had loved each other to answer better, once. Not then. Not anymore. If this isn’t working, then maybe we should end it. The words gave meaning to the fear; the end of the rope, the final chord. She gets to choose, not him—and she does. He doesn’t expect the firm yes. It’s a choice Victor remembers, pain and exhaustion and desperation laced between an argument that he so desperately craves.

But he doesn’t let her have the satisfaction.

“You don’t get to pin this on me.” His smile stays steady, but the eyes almost turn lethal. He loved her, once. But now, it curdles in his stomach, letting the soured love come through every syllable as if it felt only right and just. No absolution for her, not from this. “I asked you if you wanted to end it. You ran off. I wanted to find you, you shut me out. I push you for answers, you turn conversations into a wall of concrete.” Every sin, laid out before her. Victor wonders if she sees it, the rich tapestry of their demise, intoxicating and horrific. Maybe this was what Arachne felt. A loving poison. “Sure, maybe I was a dickhead, maybe I was a shit boyfriend. But don’t act like you had nothing to do with how things ended.”

an eternity passes, or it certainly feels like it. andy tries not to give it away, tries to stay stony faced. she’s a roman after all, at least in theory. but even she knows she’s starting to slip. “ in my defense, years ago i wasn’t totally sure that you even wanted to hear from me. but now things — things are weird. ” 

for a moment, andy needs to remind herself that she’s the one apologizing here. it stings; for every word to be soaked in barely concealed rage. but she knows she’s earned it, measure for measure. “ no. it’s just me. ” and once, that was enough. once, when she was seventeen and in love, even though she didn’t have the words to name it. before she went and ruined it.

what does she want from him? a time machine, a rip in the space time continuum. she wants things to go back to how they were, she wants to take it all back, she never wants to see his face ever again, she wants to have not fucked up so horrendously, she wants to be friends, or at least, to be able to be in the same room as him. “ i want us to be okay. ” she blurts out. “ no – i mean, okay. i don’t know what i want. i just had to get that off my chest. i didn’t exactly come up with a five point plan for what would happen afterwards, victor.  ”

•

Confession. Absolution. It seems so Catholic to him. Andromache wants confession, and all the things that come with it. He understands guilt, the washing of hands, the need to become better, but all it does is infuriate him. He isn’t a priest, or a therapist, hell, even a friend to her, not after the unread messages. His jaw sets, before he speaks, trying to calm the raging waters beneath his chest, to settle them, before he says something to jeopardize the mission.

Victor hates that she can see him. Not the man made of marble that he wants himself to become, but the flayed, bitter thing held in manacles, opened and ready for scrutiny beneath her gaze. There is nothing worse, he assumes, than the mortifying ordeal of being known. Maybe this is a conversation that assures him that he will never let it happen again. “I guess it’s my turn, right?” His gladius holstered, arms crossed, smile as if it would kill if you look at it. Another weapon.

“You left. Even if I was blind, you left me months before we had that godsdamned fight. And then, you disappear. Don’t reply to messages, not Iris, not text. I thought that you just frankly didn’t want me in your life. Fucking hurt, but I figured you wanted a clean break from us. From this. And I was at peace with that.” He lets his words speak for themselves, the candor letting itself bite into her heart. The smile never drops, dripping bitter poison and Victor continues. “But you want to say sorry. So fine. Be sorry. We’ll work together, we’ll fight together, we’ll be good and civil between us, as grace from your apology, but I’m not doing shit with you. I don’t want to be in the same room as you. I don’t want to spar. I don’t want to have small talk. I don’t even want to fight with you.”

“Brunch is always fun first of all,” he reminded Victor. Having spent a lifetime hearing about the the most important meal of the day, he would gladly go on a tangent about the topic if the group wasn’t set to depart today. “Plus we’re going to be stuck in a car for days so we’ll have plenty of time to research,” he pointed out. At least, they were finally  escaping the heat of New York City. “How are you though? We’re marching through the unknown right now,” he asked. Like many, the quest had been on his mind. Unlike previous quests they had all undertaken, this was the first time Olympus and the demigods were on the same page - lost and confused.

“ oh, well. ” fuck. “ cards out on the table, i didn’t think i’d get this far. given — well, you know. ” the words spill out from andy’s lips faster than she can control them, her tone monochromatic and soaked in self-deprecation. should she continue down the path of incoherent rambling, either she ends up looking like an idiot or being totally misunderstood. andy isn’t sure which one is worse, but she does know she needs to get ahold of herself.

“ i came here… ” she swallows down hard, and tried to ignore the sensation of the pit in her stomach slinking down further. “ look, i just need to apologize. for everything that happened when we were together, especially at the end.” she is never sure what exactly to do with her hands, so for now they loop into the pockets of her shorts. “ i was scared, okay? i was scared about what i felt for you. and about what that meant for me. and i got distant. because i didn’t know how to deal with that. and if i could go back i’d change things but i can’t so — ”

“ so i’m sorry. ” andy’s never been a strong contender for the most well-adjusted demigod. she’s never been good with goodbyes, or change. she let things fester for too long in the cavern of her heart. and even now, there’s something lingering still, something she has yet to place. “ and - um. yeah, that’s all i wanted to say. ”

•

There were ways that Victor dreams—no, dreamed that this would happen. Little skits of comedy that ended with a kiss and a slap and waking up to each other, as if nothing had happened between them, sickly sweet and buried beneath his chest. Maybe a fight and anger and a shouting match in the middle of it all. But all he knows, the irony of it all, is to push and to fight for a victory that seems hollow at best, and self-destructive at worst. He can almost see Anaïs now, her gaze pinning him to the floor as he marks his next move.

He lets the silence stretch for five seconds, ten seconds, to an agonizing fifteen until he speaks, training that same cold-iron gaze on Andy—on Andromache as if she’ll bolt like a rabbit after she pours her heart out to him. “I wonder if this would have had a better effect, say, years ago, rather than before an important quest in, oh, a few days.” He underlines it, the grip on his gladius tightening. A breath. Two. The poison of bitterness, unset texts, broken training dummies in the training grounds come rushing back as if this only happened the day before. “But, to be fair, I didn’t think you’d even get this far either.”

          There were few familiar faces that Zayyan would voluntarily reencounter,  and Victor just so happened to be one of them. He’d also been a reminder of just how arbitrary the lifelong Greek and Roman feud was, and was their sustained friendship during college not proof of such? 

          “I guess I’m also relieved to know that there’s at least half a brain with the Romans,” he retorts as his lips curl into an approving smirk, not knowing if his potentially failed attempt at banter. fell flat or not Coffee was much needed after attempting to resettle temporarily into New Athens after being away from some time, and he’d take any opportunity presented to promote the coffee spot that grew so dear to him over the years. “I know the perfect place, actually,” Zayyan says, burying his hands into his pockets, and gesturing with his head to indicate what direction. “I couldn’t leave you to sulk alone— it’s more effective when we work as a team.”

“Zayyan, I don’t sulk. I brood. There’s a stark difference! We shared a room for gods’ sake,” he replies, wagging a finger. Victor looks at him and the ghost of his own smile comes back, a crooked, glass-cut thing that seems to cut whatever he aims it at. Levity was never something afforded to him, always something to do, something to achieve, something to be good at. But now, at least, at the calm before the storm, he lets himself just be.

𝐰𝐡𝐨: andromache boutros && victor acosta ( @advictcriam​ ). 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧: may 19th, 2021. 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞: the training grounds, camp half blood.

time to rip off the bandaid, andy thinks, making the long trek from the poseidon cabin, and hope the wound doesn’t tear open anew. before mount olympus, before the quest, before all this bullshit that’s sure to bubble up to the surface — andy knows one thing. she needs to talk to victor. 

she has put this off for long enough, coming up eight years now. their relationship ended as it began; abrupt, a little volatile. andy has no qualms about her contributions to their demise: she was the one who first began to pull away, she was the one who ended things. she was the one who ran away — quite literally — from her problems. andy owes him this much, at least. whether or not he accepted her apology was something she had yet to consider. honestly, getting this far is a surprise. but there is something clutching at her chest, something rattling, which she needs to be rid of.  this is for him, yes. but it’s for her, too.

“ hey. i thought i’d find you here. ” andy traces the edge of the training ground. her hands are held behind her back, clasped together to hide their shaking. it’s an old habit. a nervous tick, one which has followed her well into adulthood. no more running away. andy clears her throat. “ can we talk ? before — you know…everything.  ”

•

Bitterness has always coated the outside of Victor’s life. In the way that his accomplishments were turned into luck, in the way that his father’s folly cursed his existence, in the way that the goddess of retribution herself seems to dog his every step. So it’s no surprise that when he saw Andromache come his way, that same bitterness seems burn with a renewed flame.

There were things that he could say, too many retorts bit back beneath the guise of propriety. Victor and his anger never ran hot, and perhaps it’s one of the things that he regrets not being able to do, to simply express displeasure without the undertone of poison beneath his heart. But he lets it happen. If the quest is something to be taken care of for the glory of the gods, he supposes that it would be beneficial for them to have this over with. Either way, she’s going to avoid him again, and he would return to working in silence with the others.

“I could’ve done this over text, but I suppose we can do this here”  Cold iron anger between syllables, as he looks at her and crosses his arms. His eyes scan her for anything, nervousness, eagerness, infatuation, but nothing. Bitterness is a poison that blinds, and so he lets it run its course. “So yes, Andromache. We can talk.”

Victor, in his time after the Second Titan War, let himself drown in the waters of academia, trying to find some order and structure from the aimlessness that he found himself in. It was hard, of course, the adjustment, but made easier by the fact that he had found an unlikely friend among the Greeks of all people. Equally guarded and equally skilled, Zayyan made a fine addition to the quest, though it always went without saying.

“i’m glad you joined me this morning,” julian beamed in between sips of his mimosa. although the urgency of the quest hadn’t left his mind, he had to acknowledge the minor objectives attached to the end goal. as lupa taught her students, one always had to be five steps ahead of their opponent. “are you going to share or be a grouch over french toast though?” he teased, reviewing the breakfast menu. following his usual morning workout, a hearty breakfast always followed. he found comfort in the routine, even if his companion decided to turn their run around the lake into a race.

@advictcriam​

PANDORA — Describe what you value most in a friendship.

There is nothing in his voice that betrays emotion, but his face turns as if slightly amused. Friendship between himself and others was few and far between, even before the ill-advised romance that he had between another Roman, but it’s one that he enjoys, though he would never admit to that in front of them. “The people, I think. It’s better to be with people than not, you know.” An open area, a vulnerable one he knows to conceal, the spaces between a ribs where he learns to shove his gladius into to get to a still-beating heart. Victor is lonely. It is a melancholy thought, one shoved aside to make room for the facade he so thoroughly enjoys. “What else is there to value, anyway?”

HIPPOLYTA - Describe what you’re most grateful for.