#convo:xander

Working with Aegon was a dream, Atlas’ other half handled the books and Atlas did all the real work. But it was seasonably warm, and oddly sunny for fall. Everyone had the day off, Woven was closed for the day. Corinth had been his home for years now, he loved it here, loved the adventures, the people, and to some extent he loved the danger too. Atlas had always needed purpose, he was once a witch born with the gift of sight - he divined meaning from clouds, dreams, birds, stars. Anything he could get his hands on had a hidden lesson etched in its underbelly. Now, Atlas was a fury. He’d have centuries of time alongside his immortal other half, the things they could do together, the places they could go. The stories they would someday tell. It all excited Atlas a great deal more than Aegon, Xander least of all Atlas thought. Because the former vampire knew something that Atlas did not yet, a fact that was too painful for Atlas to admit outloud: someday the fury would tire of eternity, and all that would be left was heartache and the people who punctuated the bright places in between. Xander, too, might someday become such a punctuation. 

“My brother keeps asking me when you’re going to propose.” Atlas stated simply as he stopped in at Xander’s office at the museum, his boyfriend the relic was older than at least half the things the Corinthians had on display here. The fury set a pair of coffees down between them before he took a seat on the corner of Xander’s desk, “I don’t think I can tell him that I’m not interested in marriage anymore because he knows I’m lying. So, what should I say?” Not done talking yet, he didn’t let Xander answer before he spoke again. “I found something in the Underworld the last time I was there, you’ll never guess what it is.” 

The last time they’d parted Markus was still coming off of being freshly brought back from the pit, maybe his behaviour was... less than ideal, particularly because all Xander had really expressed was concern. Finding the man came simply enough, there was a time when Xander was his sire, and even before that, they’d been in love. Tracking him down was second nature to Markus now. “There’s something different about you.” He observed, if Xander expected an apology he would be disappointed, but he was here, and he had questions for someone who was even older than him. “Cut your hair?”

“I brought you something,” Ikaros smiled as he deposited a crate of wine onto Xander’s kitchen table. He was happy for his friend, the two of them had a long history together and times like this were worth celebrating. The trickster had no idea what had possessed the man to make the decision that he had, it wasn’t something that Ikaros himself believed in but as long as his invitation found its way in the mail then it was worth it. “I was in a state when you told me, consider this an apology, I’ll even provide all the wine for the reception, free of charge. Congratulations, I’m happy for you.” 

The pain had become tolerable, at least in a sense. His powers still felt distant to him, as if there was a wall of agony between where he was and where he needed to be. The old one’s thoughts were drawn to those who were kept from the storm, to the librarian that Petrichor had all but dismisses as a monster, to his sister who would fight the storm itself if she could. Gabriel would survive the storm, there was no doubt in his mind about that, Ptolema, too, was not so easily beaten. He was concerned for the others. For Lucas, for Sebastian, and of course for Rowan. She was perhaps even more headstrong than the others. Then, of course, there was Henry, he had revealed to the man much, but was it enough to keep the human alive?  “Tell me, Hephaestion,” Petrichor spoke when the two were well enough away from the crowd, Phoenix braced himself against one of the walls when they came to a stop, they were checking once more for any imperfections in the collapse, a gap that might afford them an escape. “you’ve lived your fair share of lifetimes, who do you think is behind this?”

Few were the stories of mortal lives that were of enough interest to catch his attention all the way on the other side of the veil. Elysium was removed enough that Hykinthos did not need to pay attention to the tales that were spread about him if he did not need to. Hephaestion was one such man that he had heard of, well, Myles had heard first of Alexander The Great, his general and personal guard was a name that always came after. Inherently the man respected someone who, like him. had to fight their way out of another’s shadow, he knew all too well how difficult that could be. The Macedonian King who had nearly conquered the world had ended up in Elysium, in the end, he had assumed that Hephaestion would be waiting for him, but Persephone, it seemed, had had other plans. 

“So, this is where you’ve been keeping all this time.” Myles mused, his eyes cast squarely across the bar, his speech short and frank, direct he was not a man who cared to mince words. It was archaic, but as a child he had been raised to value brevity of speech, that hadn’t changed much over the years. Of the two of them, Apollo had always been the poet. “He still waits for you, you know.”

At dawn, August bathed in the light of day, he used sand and smoothed stones as he’d done in his youth to remove the film of the Otherworld that clung to his spirit like a second skin. It was far from what he’d felt in the past, more perverse, more profane. He wondered what it was about the fae that left them unimpeded by the crossing, but paid it little mind and less until at last the foul aura had been purged along with the sage that the High Queen had slipped into his system.

He spent the next day kicking over stones where he could find them, the chalice rang true to some obscure references he’d found in the past. But none that he had brought with him to Ashbourne. It took some degree of magic and focus, but August managed to pull through and obtain the text where such an artifact had been referenced. It was among references to human lore on a volume of dark artifacts that Isaac had been seeking, the fountain of eternal youth. It promised life eternal for mortals, but absently the words couldn’t ring true. All things came at a price, he thought distantly to his aunt’s crooning laughter: the only thing certain in the lives of us mortals, is death. 

Such a thing shouldn’t exist, not rightly. It was out of the pages of an odyssey, some quest that would never quite be fulfilled. And he was expected to find it within the course of a week. August found Xander once more, eager to find out what the fae had learned since the last time they had spoken. “Do you have any preference on what I should call you now?” August greeted, not sure what to sift from his experience in the fae realm - why Xander? “Feels strange to call you Xander when I know now your name is Vitalis.” Stranger still that the air fae had never told him before, but August had never thought to ask, and in the vastness of the other fae’s life, it was just another detail. 

Somehow no longer plagued by engagements, the air felt lighter in their house. Xander, too had a newfound sense of purpose and a power he was yet to understand. Alecto told Atlas that the power his boyfriend now wielded was an ancient one that had been returned to this world recently, but he was still mortal. Despite all that Atlas and the other furies had done, more dangerous creatures flocked to the city: manticores, dryads, and now dragons. If Xander had awoken one day with this power then that meant there was likely others who had done the same, others who could very easily abuse this gift. There was much to think about, and Atlas always did his best thinking in front of his loom - it helped also to calm the fury instinct within him. The biting anger telling him to go out and hunt, to throw himself into the fire. The door to his craft room opened and he greeted Xander’s handsome face with a smile before he turned his attention back to the shuttle in his hand. “Well, did you have fun?” Atlas asked, teasingly. “We’re not going to get a mob of angry farmers at our door complaining about eaten livestock, are we?”

The loom at the house wasn’t as nice as the one he kept at his shop, at least that was his excuse for the late hours he’d been working lately. That, coupled with the hunts he’d been going on with Sofia had kept him from the house more often than not. Kyon had been a frequent companion, even if she frequently whined for Xander. Atlas sat before his loom now in his craft room before he heard the door open behind him, the other’s presence was a familiar one, and duly comfortable. Whatever Xander had said Atlas ignored it, instead set to task of passing his shuttle along over and under the threads that were kept tense by the supports. Atlas glanced over his shoulder at the other, “There are leftovers in the fridge, you can have that for dinner.”