#alphic

But even the loveliest of roses has its thorns, and in the next moment Romeo swings out with a blow that nearly knocks all the sense from P. Hades’ head, his spiked bracelets cutting into a dark cheek, his fist momentarily dazing as it forcibly jars his skull.

If he were mortal, he’d be concussed-- Romeo tells him as much, though perhaps not in so many words.

He knows P. Hades understands the message behind his left hook, the whiplash crack it makes as it impacts his jaw. So too can he read into the way a raised arm, as if anticipating the next blow reflexively, comes up to block the vicious jab that comes next, by far the most brutal in Romeo’s preferred progression.

There’s a familiarity to it, the way they know each others’ moves, can sense the flow of battle. Romeo sweeps his legs out from under him, even a few moments of freedom from beneath Hades’ palm enough time to push himself to his knees, enough space that he has a chance to block his next blow.

P. Hades curses himself. He falls for it every time.

“If you were mortal,” he grinds out, gritting his teeth as he catches Romeo’s arms mid-grapple. “That would have hit.”

“If we were mortal,” Romeo spits back, jaw tight with exertion. “You would be dead.”

(It’s not a past they like to delve into, and they tighten their grips over each others’ arms hard enough that even the sons of gods bruise.)

With a snarl, P. Hades dives for Romeo’s throat, snapping his jaws at the vein there exposed, as if with lips and fangs he could tear open his neck, “There’s more than one way to get to the Underworld, if that’s what you’re offering, Romeo.”

Romeo can only wedge his elbow between them, his eyes ablaze with hate and passion and the bitter, bitter ashes of what might once have been love.

“No thanks,” he hisses, burying the agony of teeth breaking skin. “Mortality’s for chumps.”

And with a whip of his wrist, he slices open Sin Paris’ lips with barbed bracelets and a bloody fist, his wings flicking out in the midst of that deadly dance. Distance has always been Romeo’s ally-- he could spend years running away, flying ever-further; it could be years before he catches him again.

Hades guesses that he has maybe fifteen minutes before his wings heal properly, before the burned-away feathers come back full-grown. Fifteen minutes left to an encounter he spent years ripping the world apart at its seams in search; years spent traversing the realms with the thought of Romeo at the end of it all. Fifteen minutes. It’s not enough time for him.

It’s never enough time.

Anger boils beneath his skin, hot and stinging as it condenses in his eyes, and before his foolish tears can betray him, he rushes forth with flames at his wrists, flames at his feet, flames burning like the sun within his gaze. He can’t let him escape again; he cannot-- for when Romeo is not in his reach, the world is cold and barren to him, the world is without heat.

Romeo’s never quite been the gentle shift of spring, but Sin Hades prefers wildfires, anyway.

They make impact with the stone walls of that cavern, jewel-quartz coming away scarlet red as it shatters beneath the force of Hades’ fists, Romeo’s spine. He can read it like a book, the ferocity written across such a pretty face, the fight that’s still within him. 

“Surrender,” growls Sin Paris. He almost manages to persuade himself that this isn’t a plea for Romeo to come back with him, down deep into the Underworld where he is prince.

“I don’t take orders, sweetheart,” Romeo smirks, his busted, gorgeous mouth mending itself even as he speaks. “Or has it been so long that you’ve forgotten even that much?”

Those words dig like knives into his gut, testing what little patience he possesses. He can’t stand Romeo, in that moment, even dear as he holds him yet, and o! Hades loathes himself for wanting it still.

His lips’ Cupid’s-bow mends itself, healing with the powers of the gods right before P. Hades’ own eyes-- it drives him mad, it drives him insane. It’s just one more mark of their encounter that will be gone, soon, gone with all the bruises that gods do not keep, gone with the sprains and cracked bones and feathers scorched away.

“Fuck you,” Sin Paris replies, and throws his fist knuckles-first into Romeo’s face, if only to spill his blood again, to shut up that gorgeoustemptingpretty foolish mouth of his.

Romeo outright laughs, spitting a fallen tooth in Hades’ face.

“Why, Hades, babe, I didn’t know you still wanted me like that,” he croons, even as he clears from his mouth the blood from his own wound. It glistens in the dim light as he speaks, dribbling over a pale chin, a sculpted jaw, the curve of his Adam’s apple.

Sin Paris can’t help but think of how dearly he wants to kiss that deep, deep red away; to pin Romeo beneath him and push him into the realm of Hades, to claim his life below the earth forevermore. He wants to kill him, wants to hate him and desire him for eternity, and he throws his second punch too-angry, too-wild. Too desperate.

That’s his failing, then, the opening that lets Romeo knee him in the gut.

He dodges the next time Romeo swings his legs, arching in a brutal roundhouse, fighting the way his stomach still swims with nausea and agony. Part of him wonders if this is what he’s heard the mortals call having butterflies-- yes, he thinks, butterfly stitches. Anyone but a god would surely require sutures after such a blow.

Hades ducks; he smashes his fist into Romeo’s side where he knows an earlier wound still bothers him, festers beneath the boning of his corset-bonds, and it is vengeance that rises with joy in his chest as the air falls out of Romeo’s lungs. 

And that’s all the opportunity he needs to flick a dagger from its holster, gleaming silver with every movement as he bursts forward, intent on driving it into Romeo’s heart, for there is more than one way to Hell and this is the quickest.

He doesn’t expect Romeo to lift his bare hand, to catch the blade within it, gripping tightly as he presses back against that force. The weapon is tossed to the side in the next moment, clattering onto the dirt, the ruby of Romeo’s blood blooming like flowers where it lands.

“Nice try,” Romeo grits out, clenching his wounded fist as if to draw out his pain. It’s a diversion, and Hades narrowly twists to the side as Romeo’s other hand lashes out with a dagger of its own, slicing long, jagged line over his collarbone.

They are close, now, too close-- and Hades takes what opportunity he can to draw his spare. Their other weapons have long been lost earlier in the altercation, or have run out of ammunition otherwise, and now, blade-to-blade with Romeo in breath’s reach, he finds himself more lethal than ever.

They clash brazenly against each other, sparks clashing was sliver meets gold, and Hades wants perhaps more than he has ever wanted in all two-thousand years of his existence. Rage and betrayal and lost-found love broil viciously beneath his breast, and Romeo is beauty itself, for there is fire within him, yes, and death, and death--

He breathes him in like he is air, and their battle collides no longer between blades but between tongues and teeth. They bite hard (they always have), but even this is a more pleasurable sort of pain than the other kind of weapons their bodies can form.

It’s agony when Romeo pulls away, that familiar smirk of his devastating in its smugness. It is within itself an attack-- an insult that cannot go unanswered.

Sin Paris strikes next with his mouth, sucks a ruined lip between his own. He tastes pomegranate in lieu of blood, like a pact. 

His spell-circles there within the dungeons and catacombs of Castle Vinkus are prepared in advance, scribed carefully on the floor in a place where neither foot nor dirt nor water shall touch them, no, leastways not until West’s own liquefied flesh spills onto them from the grating above.

The intricate scrapings of chalk and sulfur and desperate hope take him weeks to weave; a delicate network of what-ifs and interplanar dependencies, and a single mote of a trigger that hinges on the brazen guess that his soul will linger, if but a millisecond, after he is dead.

(He will be dead when storytime comes, if only for a moment-- this, his mother has told him since he was a child.)

(It does not make the fear within him lessen.)

To the passerby’s eye, West’s saving grace looks like the scribbles of a madman; a treatsie in the tongue of insanity itself. It’s not a false assumption, not when the eldritch beasts who take on no form speak in West’s abyssal runes, when he evokes the expanse of the universe itself with his cry for help.

He evokes Newton, Aristotle, L.Frank Baum himself as he fills the water-bucket-- like loading a bullet he knows shall find his heart. He prays for clearer skies.

He reads the textbooks and he knows: Celestinium is the element of the stars’ own light, pure and carefully filtered through time itself and, yes, Deep Space. Sulfur begs for it, here on Earth, as West himself so dearly begs for life, and it is the quickest way he can call himself back to his own skin. A cloudy day could be the end of him.

It’s predicted, over-prepared, everything from the pull of gravity on his liquefied mass to his own splash radius, the time it takes for him to hit his spell-circle a puddle. Not a drop of him falls outside the carefully-drawn circumference; not a moment too late does his lingering soul begin to pull the dimensions towards him, recombining his very molecular structure until he is solid once more. By all means, the spell should be a success.

But as he unites body and soul once more, there is a chilling hand hovering over his shoulder; the presence of a creature which is surely more reaper than man.

(And West is not a fool, he thinks, he should have forseen this, too.)

“Leave,” says that agent of death, his voice gruff and low. “You were not meant to take this form again-- you were not meant to live on.”

It’s remarkably irritating to West, the idea that his work could be for naught. Something like ire rises within him, then, something that reminds him of a Legacy Day when the hope to rebel still had not gone.

“I do a lot of things I’m not exactly meant to,” West remarks dryly. “I’ve no fear of these rules.”

“Rules are rules,” the reaper scowls. “But orders are orders. My job is to bring you in.”

“So you say,” West scowls, an idea churning within his mind. “But even the agents of death are bound by fairytale as deeply as I.”

“And what legacy do you think mine?” The reaper scoffs.

“Anything I guess specifically would be a baseless hypothesis, now,” West shakes his head. “I’m referring to the tales-- how one may always challenge death to a game over their soul.”

“Ah,” the reaper snorts derisively. “You’re one of those people.”

“If the stories are true-- if fairytale binds you as deeply as it bound me,” West clarifies. “I would like to partake in this challenge.”

“Fine,” replies the reaper, seeming to sigh and settle in. “Choose your game. You want chess? Checkers? Tiddlywinks? I’ve got all of them.”

“No, it’s all right,” he replies modestly, “I brought my own game set.”

And West pulls from his cloak the very last game anyone wants to play with a physicist:

Jenga.

He teaches them the history that's on the itinerary-- perhaps losing himself a bit as he discusses, for a moment, fairytale deviations and circumstances where the truth was exaggerated. There was no Raven Queen back when he was in high school; nobody to tell him that scripts were not the immovable, immaculate marble Headmaster Grimm would have you believe they were. No, fairytales come far more stained than stone-- they are only ink on paper, and hardcover, yes, but foldable and bendable and changeable.

TA Khamis stops and reminds his students not to deface the books in the library. You know. Just in case someone takes his metaphor a little too literally.

At the end of class, he collects the papers that were due, the homework that had been assigned the Thursday prior, each student passing in their essays. It's Badwolf's assignment, three-to-five pages on the student's fairytale legacy-- how previous villains fulfilled it, all the to-dos and not-to-dos of following your destiny, what mistakes your forbearers made that should never again be repeated.

(Khamis disagrees with the assignment-- reading sixteen essays about sticking more closely to the script has never seemed less appealing.)

"Feel free to leave after your papers are turned in," he says, for even villains deserve the afternoon sun-- "And see you next Tuesday."

The papers pile up quickly, few students willing to linger when there are better places to go. He sorts the essays carefully into his "To-Grade" folder, students dismissing themselves one by one until he reaches the end of the line.

It's West, as usual, West-comma-Celadon at the end of the line-- and just like every week, he slides two papers over Khamis' desk.

"I, uh," he mumbles. "Cupid's out today. He asked me to turn this in for him."

(It's a lie, of course it is. West tells it every week.)

"I see," Khamis' lips press together, thinning.

He knows Badwolf'll give Cupid-comma-Romeo-V extra credit for this flagrant disrespect of should-be authority, double extra credit for cheating. Perhaps a bit vindictively, Khamis marks him as having been in class today. It's all he can do to lessen Badwolf's glee.

"This one is his," replies West, sliding over a carefully printed paper. It's four and a half pages of well-sourced fairytale history, detailed descriptions of previous hitches and successes for that fairytale. Exactly what Badwolf wants.

(There's no chance the real Cupid wrote it.)

"And yours?" Khamis asks, and he cannot help the concern that ebbs into his voice.

West is silent for a moment. He hands over a much slimmer packet-- two pages only, by far less than the required minimum three.

Khamis' brow furrows in a frown. "Are you sure you wish to turn this in? I can give you another three hours, you know... office hours close at five-thirty today."

"No," West shakes his head. "I'm certain."

Khamis takes a deep breath in. "You know, you can tell me if there's something that's been getting in the way of completing your own homework. A... heavy workload from other sources, perhaps?"

"... it's fine," West mutters, "I wrote down everything I needed to write."

Khamis has his reservations about it, but in that moment, his student flees and he can question him no further. Hesitantly, more hesitantly yet, he peeks inside that page although it is his practice to grade alphabetically. He needs to know.

Besides the cover page, there is only one sentence in his essay: I will not make my forbearers' mistake of repeating our legacy at all.