Greece is shameful for them, even Thena doesn't escape Sprite's mind. Athena is cruel and proud for all that she is the hero of Athens. Phastos becomes Hephastus, Kingo disappears, and Sersi becomes a witch who turns men into pigs.
Druig walks until the end of the continent and boards a ship to an island. He lives in the forests and bogs there and tries his hand at being Sersi or Ajak.
The people who come to him call themselves druids and they only come to him at midday and midnight. They call his forest a nemeton and declare the groves where he walks sacred. They celebrate festivals and sabbaths around the times he helps them and he comes to love them and know them well.
While Sprite is in Greece and Italy telling the people he mopes in a pit of water as Hades and Pluto he walks among the Druids and is happy with them and for them.
Then the Romans come and his family comes with them.
They don't understand him and haven't try to. He had thought that it was acceptance, but it was bemused tolerance. The Druids, everyone decides, are a strange people and are better off forgotten among the Eternals, and the Romans think they are better off dead.
Genocide.
Forever after there is a tale that Druig hates; the Ban Sithe or wailing woman, who screams whenever someone is about to die. That is the tale that Sprite spins of him sobbing over the ruined bodies of his men, women and children.
No one has any care for dark Druig's druids.
He learns a cold truth that day, that they could hurt each other as deeply as any Deviant and Ajak couldn't heal that wound no matter how much it hurt.
Mankind is capable of generosities and monstrosities in the same turn and he dances as mad as a dervish trying to swing the pendulum to right. Inconspicuous among them their thoughts sing to him like birds at dawn and twilight. It is so easy for him to catch their minds, to twist them into righteous and admirable shapes, but to force someone on the right course is worse than them choosing wrong.
He thought that until the druids, until the horrors of Tenochtitlan.
He knows human malice; human cruelty, and he started to drown in the hatred they invented for their own species. He knows it like a bat knows its way in the dark, constantly hearing the wrong way to go. It buzzes in his ears all hours of the day and night like a hive of bees.
The Spanish come to Tenochtitlan for its riches and they bring war to claim them.
It was that fucking knife.
Mankind was always trying to reinvent that gold fucking knife.
Druig tried not to interfere, but how could Arishem create him with the power to stop it all and think he would never interfere? Why would He make him this way? Why would He put him on the Domo when his power was to interfere?
His purpose haunts him.
Ikaris is a creature of order and routine, and he will always value the Eternals and their mission more than the humans. It's easy to see; he doesn't even try to learn the languages of humans until the rest of them begin speaking in them exclusively.
Even then he doesn't speak anymore than he has to, always distant, always professional.
He's a good space-god-fearing man.
Ikaris loves Arishem more than even Ajak does and he hasn't even communed with Him as she had. He keeps His edicts and interprets His Word to the letter and thus two of them clash.
For all that Druig was meant to defy Ikaris was meant to obey.
Ikaris takes Ireland and Druig's time there as the definition of interference. Hypocrite , Druig calls him, Ajak built Babylon, Sersi interfered with every single settlement we’ve ever come across and you didn't so much as mumble to them that they could be wrong.
Ikaris says nothing but Druig knows that he agrees. The truth of it rises to the top of Ikaris’ thoughts like cream.
He follows Druig in the sky at night trying to using the cover of clouds to hide but Druig can feel the cool air of Ikaris' mind anywhere. He has become more and more insistent that Druig stay close. The blue of his eyes rarely leave Druig nowadays.
Druig scoffs, As if proximity can stop him from hunting down the Conquistadors in the night.
"Where were you?" Ikaris demands as Druig finishes climbing the stairs of the temple where they sleep. His jaw is clenched tight and the blue of his eyes burns in torch light. He casts his eyes over Druig hot and possessive in the cool air searching for some infraction to condemn him with.
Druig catches the hot blue of his gaze with his own and snorts, "Did ya miss me?"
Ikaris storms over to him and lifts Druig off the ground by the collar of his tunic. "Where were you?"
"Why ask if you already know?" Druig grunts and Ikaris bared his teeth. He shoves Druig into the cool stone of the wall behind him.
"What is wrong with you?" Ikaris hisses fury on his face. "I don't understand you."
"Understand me?" Druig jerks his chin up and he looks down his nose at Ikaris. "You understand them then? The humans and what they're doing? Killing each other and—"
"That's what I don't understand." Ikaris cuts him off. "Why do you care?"
"Why do I care?" Druig mouth twists. "It's wrong."
"Wrong?" Ikaris sighed, dropping his head and when he looked up he had nothing to say Druig wanted to hear.
"It's what they do, Druig," Druig opens his mouth and Ikaris shakes his head. "It's what they've always done. It's their nature."
"It's wrong." Druig insisted.
"Perhaps it is wrong to them and theirs,” Ikaris conceded, squaring his shoulders. “But what I know to be wrong is you ignoring our Directive." Druig face flushes as anger heats his blood to boiling. "We're not to—"
"'Not to interfere'" Druig mocked. "I don't care.” Druig bared his teeth, jagged and humorless. ”It's wrong."
"You don't care," Ikaris asked, the air around him cooling.
"No, I don't." Druig replied unrepentant.
"You would forsake the Word of Arishem?" Ikaris asked lowly, his voice quiet. "You would choose these apes over your purpose?"
"No." Ikaris answered for him. "No. I will not allow you."
"Allow me?" Druig chuckled.
"If you want me to stop," Druig leaned into his face. "You're going to have to make me."
"Very well," Ikaris said and he hardened his heart against him.
“Very, well? What—” Ikaris shifts his hold from Druig’s collar grab him by the neck, his grip tight enough to bruise even an Eternal. “What are you doing, Ikaris?”
Ikaris grappled Druig’s arm behind him, taking the punch Druig cracked across his face in stride. Druig’s stomach dropped when he didn’t even move a hair out of place on him. Ikaris turned him around then and slammed his face into the wall.
“Making you obey me.” Ikaris said leaning his weight onto him. Druig's face and shoulder are held hard against the stone of their temple while Ikaris' wide palm slides the fabric of his tunic up and over the supple pale flesh of his thighs.
Druig’s stomach rolled and nausea crept up his throat.
This was Ikaris; Ikaris who had wanted since he first opened his eyes, Ikaris who was the first person he had ever spoken to, Ikaris who he had longed to know this way who was trailing clinical hands over his ass.
As if he was about to do a simple chore.
Ikaris who was going to—
"Please don' do this," Druig begged, squirming as cool night air caressed the exposed skin of his ass. "Please. I-I've got feelings for you"
"I know." Ikaris replied, pulling down the front of his kilt. The massive weight of his cock finding freedom from it’s confines.
Druig wants to puke, "You know?"
"I have wanted you too, but that will not sway me against your punishment." Ikaris says before putting his palm before Druig's mouth. "Spit."
"Please," Tears gathered in his eyes and ran free down his face. "If you know, please don'. We can forget this and—"
"Do you know what the humans call you?" Ikaris leans close to whisper in his ear. His breath is hot on Druig's ear and wants to be anywhere else but here where he can imagine them as lovers speaking in the night for these torturous moments. "Mictlāntēcutli, the god of war and death. They join you to fight and lose their lives to the advancements Phaustos gave others among them."
Druig closed his eyes to the truth but still Ikaris continued laying his huge, wam cock on Druig’s back, "Humans are born and they die, it is what Arishem has designed. Spite told them tales where war is glory and they have convinced themselves murder is honor. We have done enough so we must let them be what they are."
"You won't stop?" Druig asked.
"Have you?"
He won't stop.
Druig spat in Ikaris' palm and Ikaris slicked up his cock.
"I've seen the humans do this after a battle with their enemies." Ikaris says and he tears the fabric of Druig's tunic. It screams through the noises of Druig's panicked struggling, and Ikaris' calm breaths. "I did not understand why they would do such a thing but you have shown me they do it because they must."
Ikaris easily pushed past all the resistance Druig's hole had to offer. He hissed in Druig's ear as the thick length of his cock carved a space for itself within Druig. Druig gasped, "Please. It's too big. You're gonna tear me apart."
"You will adjust," Ikaris promised before pulling out a bit. "Or you will break but you will remember."
"Ikaris, don' please," Druig begged again but Ikaris was deaf to his pleas. Ikari’s snapped his hips forward into the slick warmth of Druig’s hole. He grabs Druig's throat harder, hard enough to stop him from speaking, from shouting for help.
Ikaris snapped his hips, his cock fighting against the friction. The too thin lubricant of spit already ran out and he continued to hammer his cock into Druig. "You exist to serve, for our mission, and all else is frivolities."
"I will help you remember your purpose," Ikaris whispers in Druig's ear and Druig's stomach twists at the perversion.
This is how lovers speak.
Why couldn't Ikaris love him properly instead of this?
At some point Druig had begun to bleed and the honey gold ichor made Ikaris' cock slick enough to take pleasurably. Druig's cock had filled with blood too and rubbed against the wall covered in the front of his tunic.
He was going to cum from this, he thought from far away where he and his anger hid from this. It brought him back and he hated it, hated that despite the pain he knew how good Ikaris would be if he had come to him in desire and love.
There is no need to be so wilful, Ikaris says sweetly in his ear. There is peace in submission to your purpose.
What is my purpose, Ikaris, Druig asked voice small as an ant.
To serve, Ikaris replied and if it was him he was asking Druig to serve he would consider it even now after all he's done, but he knows his fellow Eternal.
To serve who, Druig asked, dreading the answer.
Arishem, Ikaris said confidently. When you obey Him you will be happy.
Druig sags in Ikaris' hold as he sighed, And if I can't?
Then I will help you again , Ikaris said smiling.
"That's what you call this?" Druig yelled turning in his hold, eyes flashing. Ikaris loses his grip in his surprise and Druig burst free like smoke from a fire. " Helping me?"
What is going, Ajak asked walking into the room.
Ikaris looks at Druig in confusion before turning to her, "Nothing."
Druig hates him in that moment. He pushes Ikaris aside and limps away from him and Ajak's questions as quick as he can golden godsblood and the pearl of Ikaris cum leaking from him.
The horrible thing is Druig knows that they won't believe the truth from him. Not Dark Druig the most unconventional among them, not next to shining Ikaris. But worse than that he doesn't think Ikaris finds any fault with what he did.
"Don't." Ikaris says.
"Make. Me." Druig dares him.
Admit all the things you haven't said. Tell them the truth, Shining One.
Druig waited and Ikaris showed no sign he even knew what Druig upset about, but he does push him against the wall again.
It's the same wall and Druig struggles like a snake on fire.
"Let him go," Ajak says and Druig is free, has set them all free in his defiance, all except for Ikaris.
Good, Druig thinks as he seizes control of the humans.
Let his duty be a cage.
Let him stew with what he's done to me.
Druig walks into the darkness and does not see another Eternal for six hundred years.