The Deviant shook its hand, and the golden light of Celestial energy shone around its arm. The light that surrounded Gilgamesh’s hand whenever they fought together, whenever they sparred with one and other to pass the time, around the Deviant’s hideous arms, mocking her weakness, jeering at her inability to save him.
Her gaze turned deadly.
When it turned and ran back into the cave, she pushed forward, following it into the darkest recess of the cave. Time faded. The outside world, the other Eternals, her family, everything faded away. The only thing that she knew what the Deviant, the one who had killed her Gilgamesh, was somewhere in here, and she needed to kill it, feel its life draining from it, to ever be able to find peace within herself again. She slipped into the hyper-alert senses of a warrior, the comfortable zone of tension and the peace that fighting always brought to her. When she fought, she was Thena, goddess of war, an Eternal who wielded endless power at her hands. When she fought, she knew who she was. Her eyes scanned every crook and nook of the cave, turning at the slightest change in the air. The Deviant had Ajak and it had Gilgamesh. It was a powerful opponent.
“Thena.” It whispered, the sound of its voice echoing in the dark, surrounding her. “Yes," she thought. “Talk more. Tell me where you are.”
She ventured further in, towards the source of the voice. “Oh, you’ve changed.” A stone fell, and she snapped her body towards it. “You’re broken.” Another stone tumbled down. “Damaged.” The voices pulsing in her head were yearning toward the Deviant’s voice, the words that fell from its mangled lips. “Useless.” She clenched her jaw and pushed the voices down, her anger and grief making them smaller. She held her shield higher, pleading with herself to keep a grip on reality.
“You can’t protect any of them.” The voice whispered. “Aha.” She thought to herself. “Got you.”
She turned and sliced the air behind her, blocking the fist the Deviant threw at her with her shield in the same instance. Gilgamesh’s power, wielded against her, not for her protection but to harm her, to kill her. Sweet, kind, warm Gilgamesh’s power. The voices inside her mind pulsed again, fighting to be let free. She held on, though, stabbing and slicing and jumping and running, her mind going on autopilot as she blocked blow after blow from the Deviant.
It was difficult to land a blow. Gilgamesh had always been able to match Thena’s prowess.
She sliced again, missing the Deviant and hitting the rock behind it instead, lava pouring out of the cut she had made in the walls of the cave. A rock tumbled down on her, and she jumped out of the way, only to lose her footing and fall to the ground. She took a deep breath, still fighting a losing battle in her mind, and conjured up her weapons. The Deviant was still there. She looked up into the smoke and dust, and leaped.
She stabbed the Deviant and it retaliated by throwing a blow, and with Gilgamesh’s strength, threw her down to the floor of the cave. She pushed herself up, but blow after blow of the familiar strength, the golden lines of power, finally helped the voices break through the barrier of grief and anger she had created, and when she looked up at the sound of the Deviant again, her eyes were glazed and pale.
“Thena, look at me. It’s me, Gilgamesh. Look at me.”The name dropped from the Deviant’s twisted lips like it meant nothing, and suddenly she couldn’t remember why she was here, in this dark cave, alone and surrounded by stone. “Stop it, you have to fight!” Some small part of her thought. “Fight what?” The voices echoed back. “What was there to fight? It’s Gilgamesh.” He was standing in front of her, taking a step towards her. She backed away, but immediately didn’t know why. “It’s Gilgamesh. What’s wrong with you?” Still, something about the voice that spoke sounded off to her. It was too smooth, to measured in its cadences, and too cold. Gilgamesh never sounded so indifferent to her, never so commanding. But her brain was muddled, the voices pushing up against her thoughts.
“Gilgamesh?” She asked, her voice barely above a whisper, just to be sure, praying it was him.
“Stay here.” He said, his voice still so toneless. But she knew where those words came from, and he knew too. It was him. She laughed, with sadness or happiness she didn’t know, blinking away the tears in her eyes, though she didn’t know why she had any tears. It was Gilgamesh. Her Gilgamesh. He was here. “Why is he here?” Some small part of her asked. She didn’t know. But he was. Her sun, always so warm and strong, was here. “In this cold, damp, dark cave?” The same part of her asked.
“Say it.” He said, staring deep into her eyes. The world was blurry around it’s edges and she saw everything as though she were underwater. She smiled, her smile unsure and hesitant. “It’s Gilgamesh. He wants you to stay.” She thought. “But why here?” The other part of her asked herself. “Because you’ll be safe.” The voices answered.
“Stay.” She choked out, her breath catching on the word, something feeling so wrong. But her trust for him triumphed her uncertainty, and she smiled, happy in the knowledge that he would always keep her safe.
“You’ll be OK.” He said, still coming closer with each word. She backed away, slowly, unsure why but feeling instinctively a danger that she never associated with Gilgamesh. “Give me your hand.” He said, reaching out a hand towards her. “He always used to say,” she thought to herself. “Used?” The other part of herself asked. “Why is it ‘used’?”
“I don’t remember,” the voices answered for her. “I don’t remember.”
She held out her hand, her breath still short, but she couldn’t remember when she had began crying. She felt him grasp her hand, and once again something off registered in her mind. His hand was so cold, so brittle and bony. Gilgamesh’s hands were always so warm and soft. Solid. Her anchor to reality. But his hand felt so wiry now, and the coldness of it struck her again.
She saw, rather than felt, herself being lifted in the air, and once again had to wonder why Gilgamesh was lifting her up, when they were near the same height and she had never had to crane her neck to look at him before. He let go of her hands, and her hands, somehow, ended up tied behind her back. “This is strange,” even her jumbled mind was able to think. “How is he holding my hands behind my back when I can see his hands? Why would he hold my hands behind my back?”
“It’s a shame.” He said, his voice finally holding some emotion since he began talking to her. But it was an emotion that sounded foreign coming from Gilgamesh. It was regret. But she had asked Gilgamesh once if he regretted taking care of her, volunteering to protect her. He had held her hand tightly, and, staring deep into her eyes, told her that he had no regrets, and that she would never be his regret.
“You and I… We’re just tools of a god. Built to kill.” He said, his voice laced with something heavy and remarkably familiar. “Built to kill?” Something in her asked. “That was strange.” She had thought the same, she still did think the same, but Gilgamesh had never allowed her to think that. She asked him once, in the dark of the night, right after they had left Babylon to find a home, in a moment of vulnerability after one of her episodes. “Gil?” The nickname slipped from her lips, though she never called him that. “What if I’m just a killer? What if we can never find a home for me?” Her voice had cracked at the end, though she tried to hide it. Silent tears slipped through her attempts at staunching them. He had come over and pulled her into his arms. “Never. Thena, you’re the goddess of war. War is death, but with death comes life, and with destruction comes creation. You are creation. And I’ll always have a home for you.” He had wiped her tears away clumsily, and she had laughed through them at the worried expression on his face. “Worry doesn’t look good on you.” She had teased, lighting and perhaps for the first time in her long life. “Shut up. You know you love me.” He had chuckled, and kissed the top of her head. “Stop giving me things to worry about, and I won’t worry, alright, goddess of creation?” She had nodded, and buried her face in his chest. She had liked that title more than any other ever given to her.
“Thena… Remember.” He said, the Gilgamesh in front of her bringing her back to reality. The familiar word played like a broken CD in her mind, in an endless loop, and suddenly, she remembered.
She remembered Gilgamesh telling her, his face dirty and covered with scratches in the dark of night in the forest, her back against the rough tree bark and the voices threatening to plunge her into their depths again.
She remembered his whisper of urgency, the fear she had felt as he had instructed her to stay and she had repeated his words, the desperation she had felt as she had tried not to succumb to the voices and her memories from past lives so she could help him, the anguish she had felt when he had jumped in front of her only to have his life force, the beautiful strength of his sucked from his body by a Deviant.
She remembered the slight glimmer of hope she had felt when she raced to his side and saw he was still breathing and felt his warmth still there, the voices silenced for a moment as she gripped her oldest and closest friend, her brother and her soulmate, as she sent a prayer out there to any god that might be listening, any Celestial who might feel lenient that he would be OK, praying with her life that he would still be there, he would always be there, because some selfish part of her couldn’t imagine life without him.
She remembered leaning close to him as she held him, never having felt her tall and muscular Gilgamesh so vulnerable, her heart breaking into a million pieces as she committed his grey and dust-covered face to memory, the brown eyes that had grounded her so many times and heard him tell her: “remember.”
She remembered the ocean of grief and guilt that had surged into her when he closed his eyes, his head hanging forward, his breath stopping, and the solid, comforting rhythm of his heart sputtering to a stop, and for the first time cursed her ability as an Eternal to detect heat change so quickly as she felt the warmth that she loved so begin to drain from him, felt coldness begin to spread in his body. She held him tight as he faded away, feeling every tiny change to his warmth, unable to stop or care about anything near them, near her and her Gilgamesh, the world fading out as she repeated “I remember, I remember” into his hair, begging and hoping that somehow, by some miracle, he would come back.
She remembered glancing up through her tears, and through the grief and pain she felt because her heart was splintering in her chest, seeing the Deviant who had sucked the life out of her Gilgamesh, and in that moment, committing its face to her memory and vowing, on everything Thena was, to kill it, to end its life with her own hands, and make it pay for what it did to her Gilgamesh, her mind overtaken for a moment by the mind-numbing sea of red that she felt.
The Deviant, the one that held her right now, the one that had just had the nerve to play on Gilgamesh’s words to her, the one that had just dared to repeat his last words to her as though they were some kind of joke.
It was no longer anger that she felt, but an all-consuming, endless, mindless fire inside of her.
She remembered who she was. She was Thena. Goddess of War.
Her eyes lost the blank, pale, glazed look, and the world was once again perfectly clear to Thena. The Deviant stuck its tentacles into her neck, and she groaned in pain as she arched her neck to get away from it, feeling it draining her power from her. But she conjured up a dagger with her remaining strength, cutting away its bonds on her hands, and then, in two, clean strokes, separated the Deviant’s head into four.
It dropped her, its body falling to pieces on the ground, crumbing to dirt and dust , and the golden particles of Celestial power dissipated from its broken body. The only sound was the sound of her breathing, laboured as she took in the scene in front of her and felt her power returning to her.
The fire inside of her quenched, and the voices, for the first time since Babylon, silenced.
“I remember.” She whispered into the fading particles of golden light, feeling, somehow, that Gilgamesh would hear. The particles floated up into the air, and peace blessed her with its presence.
She walked out of the cave, hearing the sounds of the ocean rising and the world ending outside, and arrived on the beach just in time to see Tiatmut rising. It was a spectacular sight, the golden exterior of a Celestial contrasting sharply with the ocean blue of the sky, and she closed her eyes.
She had not really cared whether or not this planet survived. Instinctively, she had known, from her episodes, that this would happen in the end. She loved the humans, but she did not see them as special as Ajak did, she did not have a family as Phastos did, and she never developed bonds with them like Sersi did. Still, she had encouraged the Eternals to fight for Earth, because she was loyal, and she had loved Ajak, and in a way, Gilgamesh’s death was just as much Ikaris’ fault as it was hers. She could not let him succeed, even though this life had held much more pain for her than any previous one.
She was standing there, taking in her last breaths of the air and the scent of the seawater all around her, saying her final goodbyes to the planet and this life of hers, when she felt her power being called above her. She opened her eyes, and watched in wonder as the golden lines of Celestial power circled her, lifting her up in the sky, and felt her power surge upwards towards the uni-mind. She had known he was the architect of the family, but she had never thought this invention of his would succeed. She smiled to herself, high in the air, contributing her energy to the uni-mind, and felt her family’s energy all around her, all of them adding their power. She felt it, like all of them did, when their powers found it outlet in Sersi’s hands, and watched in awe as the golden exterior of the Celestial become covered in snow and ice, the slow rise of the being stopping and the grumbling of the Earth silencing.
The uni-mind released her slowly, dropping her down on the sandy beach, and she stood there, still watching the palm of the Celestial’s hand carefully, knowing through their brief connection that Sersi was there. She received no sign of success, but when she saw a figure, Ikaris by the color, shoot up into the sky and out of the stratosphere, she knew they had succeeded.
She smiled to herself, saddened by the loss of another family member yet still, somehow, glad that she would not have to face him again, and turned to the sound of footsteps joining her, as her family members came to stand next to her on her beach. She watched, not saying a word, as Makkari and Druig were reunited, as Phastos and Sersi found out how the Eternals had survived the past explosions, as Sersi offered Sprite a chance at humanity, a second chance, and felt, somehow, that they had all made it past the worst, that they could all be at peace. Finally.
That was a comforting thought.