title: unbroken when: post the tinkerer where: rome trigger warnings: none
There is a bone deep weariness settling over her frame as she leaves her conversation with Thanatos. It had been the right choice to make, she knows, but it is a choice that will bring its own difficulties as time passes. It was death’s ultimatum, his way of telling her she needs to shape up or his hand will be forced, and she cannot deny the fairness of the action. Again and again she had pushed his boundaries, bringing Keket and Remus and countless others because she wanted to give them just another chance. Because they deserve the chance her first family never got.
Trivia does not regret her choices, does not regret gaining Thanatos animosity because of her actions. She does not regret a single person she has brought back, not even Remus who had sold her away for a revenge that once fulfilled had left him aimless at first.
He was her son, she had brought him back into the world, made him one of the most fearsome creatures in existence, and she would do it again, even if it meant to suffer his betrayal once more. Even if it meant she would be used once more. Whether he chose to acknowledge it or not, she saw him as family, as yet another prodigal son she needed to wait at the table until he was ready to come back home.
No amount of betrayal would change that, not when she had cradled his very essence and imbued it with life once upon a time. Not when she had seen his hurt, his own desperation to survive and had known him just as she knew himself.
Trivia loved Remus through his betrayal, through his slow return. It was not easy, but she had always known not all love was.
Loving Keket was. Loving the daughter she had saved from the flames, who had lost her path once and decided to turn around and bring light to the world because she saw that the darkness stood strong? It was as easy as breathing, as falling asleep.
Thanatos’ eternal disappointment would never make her regret bringing her back, bringing him back.
But she understood his anger, and the deal he had brought forth was beyond fair. Taking it had been logical, simple, even to her overwhelmed mind, even to her broken self, so she had made her choice and made a deal with Death.
She floats through her interactions, brief moments of grounding amidst the ever increasing screams filling her head. A broken mind cannot be healed in a few hours, an identity cannot be stitched together with a wish, but what was gone in the future remains in the presence, leaving her staggering and trembling through the waves of despair clutching at her very veins.
Seeing Pluto again is like breaking through the water and taking a first breath of air, clarity striking as she sinks into familiarity like a ship clutching at its anchor amidst a gathering storm. Despite the betrayal that will be, she seeks him and his comfort, seeks the steadiness that he gives her as her mind is fracturing by the second. His words confuse her, drag truths that she hadn’t known forth, and she knows.
She knows she will forgive him, in the end, and she hears Circe berating her for her foolishness, Lilith laughing at her weakness.
As Lycaon’s presence approaches, the final hint of safety slotting into place, she does not care.
The world is harsh and cruel, ready to take and take, and she has always been anything but. Magic was a gift meant to be shared, and she gave it freely, would do it again even with the danger of the channeling. Her love has always been given freely, and to allow the cruelty of the world to take that part of her would truly break her in ways that even the Elder Great One’s couldn’t have.
That does not mean that there needs to be no change, but merely that she will not allow it to take more away from her. Not her kindness, not her forgiveness, not her magic.
Not again.
Never again.
Thanatos’ deal is the first step of the plan that begins to form as she mends herself with magic and stubbornness alike. Slowly, stubbornly, painfully, she mends her broken edges, fitting them like porcelain and pouring gold in the cracks until what was shattered is whole again, if changed from what it had been. It is a slow process, the one of healing, but it is one she is intimately familiar with, both from experience and from seeing Keket nudge someone’s life back into place with a precise touch.
Healing is not easy, but it must be done.
So Trivia does, rebuilding the foundations of her psyche step by step.
Once she is done —finally, painfully — she looks beyond herself.
She knows what to do now.
