This time, one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of times, he’s bleeding out in my arms. It’s not like the first time, not a broken bronze chest plate and ravens picking out the maggots. There’s no funeral games here, no truce in the war, and no golden urn. Just a sweatshirt and the distinct smell of gunpowder. It’s my fault again, my rage provoked, taken out on everyone and anything within reach. I’ve always been worse than a hurricane, burned worse than the hottest days of summer. He dies protecting me, and my penance is no longer death, but having to live eternally without him. (How can one kill a god?)
Iron bites into the flesh more, the new technology running through the world faster than Zeus’ lightning, a band of wanderers from a land further than Hyperborea. He’s struck by an arrow this time, and I hardly have to scream before the people from the sea stab him through the heart. I dragged him into this and three ravens croak out a mocking song that sounds strangely more like laughter than a lament. It’s the beginning of the curse that will haunt me for eternity. There’s always some war or another, even if the format changes.
One would think that three war deities would be far too many, but that never seemed to stop the Moirai for declaring me the third puzzle piece to the particular tripartite hell that is war. The first time I see Athena roaming the halls of Olympus her face is pinched with pity, and sympathy. I only see Ares see once, eye bags the size of a small nation, and crazed mutterings escaping through his lips. I’m scared that one day I’ll end up like him.
I meet the war deities of other pantheons, eventually. I see Inanna –or Ishtar as she’s sometimes known depending on the century and the people– quite often and there’s something ancient and all-encompassing about her presence that makes the skin crawl. She’s like if Aphrodite and Athena had a baby and it’s frightening.
It’s a battle between Babylon and the Elamites. I shouldn’t be here in theory, but the curse holds strong, wherever he is, I’m with him always. I’m never a leader anymore, there’s a little less guilt in that, just a foot soldier. Inanna likes to run around as one of her sacred prostitutes, shell necklaces and gold armbands draped over Tyrian purple robes. She’s beautiful and mischievous but deadly as a viper, a combination of nightshade and honey. She holds my hand when I flinch, always watching the spear pierce my love just above the navel. I don’t love her, can’t love her, but her presence calms the roar in my skull. She’s a friend for a nearly a thousand years, until one day she fades away in a mirage and a watery smile. I may never have that luxury. (How can one kill a god?)
The next one I meet is the Morrigan, who lands on my shoulder in the form a crow as I gaze out over the peat. I flinch noticeably and she grows into a raven haired woman before my eyes. She says nothing the first meeting, just stares on out across the ocean over my shoulder. It’s years before I see her again.
This time the Romans gather off the coast, but no fighting will take place today, just trade. He’s sitting there, wearing a woad dyed cloak and a Roman helmet but he is not one of them.
“He will not die today,” Morrigan says in her distinctive croaky voice. I stare holes into his eyes, thankful for the invisibility of the divine for once.
“I know. He will tomorrow. It’s why you’re here, goddess, is it not?” I resign myself to my fate. A wolfen grin, the one I’ve seen when Athena creates a new weapon, splits across her face.
“Among other reasons. Am I not allowed to see my favourite Greek?” she laughs.
“How am I your favourite?” I ask, not sure why, surely she talks to Athena more.
“You’re the only one who visits, even if it’s just for him. You’re even the Dadga’s favourite,” she laughs and it reminds me of the day the Moirai cursed me just a little too strongly. Morrigan is probably my best friend, someone who might understand even more than Inanna.
It happens again the next morning, a version of me screaming at the general of the legion about a price, and an arrow through his temple. It hurts just as bad as the first time, and in fear of Morrigan I can’t let my tears fall. The warrior god and the goddess of might must be strong, right?
It happens again and again and again, all at the same time endlessly. Until one day, the future has no more need for fate and this time he gets to bleed out in my arms. Both of us, mortal and immortal, one 17 years old and desperate and the other 3,206 years old and still desperate. This might be the last time I see him, the curse is broken, and he might finally get some rest. Maybe I will too.
I strap rockets to my feet the week afterwards, shooting across the planet like a comet, taking down bad guys and finally living up to my title “God of Just War” (no war is just, whatever the Moirai thought. I lost everything to war and no one should have to do the same.) Morrigan joins the team after the biggest threat yet, claiming that she had nothing better to do. Her hair’s cherry red now, and she goes by a different name, but she can still kill a man with a paperclip so I don’t judge. We gain others who don’t know what we’ve done and make some sort of makeshift family, but I still weep for him, still long for Inanna’s overbearing smile. Morrigan is closer to mortal every day, as am I. I dream of him dying every night, of the threats to come (Morrigan and I compare notes in the morning, prophecy never quite left the both of us), and of the Mediterranean coast.
I wake up in a cold sweat one night after a particularly rough mission, watching a teenaged boy get shot in the chest reminds me too strongly of my former curse, and I walk into the kitchen to find a certain redhead brewing hot cocoa. I sit down across from her and stare off for a time, could’ve been a minute, could’ve been an hour, could’ve been a year. I talk of inconsequential things for a bit before she looks me in the eyes. She’s muttering to herself before she says,
“What’s the point of being a hero, with all the things we’ve seen, all the things we’ve done?” she says. Her voice is thick and hoarse with an unnameable emotion, the croak that marks her voice out from all others, the one that commands the words of power finally re-emerges.
“Penance, I think,” a mirthless laugh escapes my lips, “we’ve done a lot of bad shit in our 3,000 years. Gotta wipe the ledger clean somehow, huh, Red?” Her eyes go somewhere far away as she slips into the old language, the one older than even the standing stones that dot the Emerald Isle,
“Why, Achilles? Why us? Everyone else is gone or insane. Ares disappeared in 1945, Athena in ‘46, and Inanna… oh god Inanna… I don’t remember her face.” I do, I’ve seen it every night since she disappeared into the Iraqi desert. I answer my birth tongue, a Greek older than Greece. The syllables sit clunkily in my mouth, the sounds rusty from disuse,
“I do. I see it every night, bright as the day she left us. Morrigan… I think it’s because we already know how to be mortal. We cannot die because we have regrets.”
“What of Apollo, or Poseidon? They were mortal for a time and they’re still dying or dead,” she asks.
“They’re Olympians, they’re arrogant. We’re different. I… I can’t be forgotten because I started out mortal, to these days of science I was real therefore I can’t be forgotten. It’s the one thing the damned Moirai promised me when I left for Ilium, that I would have everlasting glory,” I ramble. Morrigan raises a perfect eyebrow,
“You think too much, Philos,” the Greek a halting stop in the lilting tongue.
“You’re probably right,” I admit, “it’s just I know why I do this. It’s for Patroclus. It’s penance. I save people because for three thousand years,” my voice hitches harshly, “I couldn’t save him, and I can’t make someone go through what I did.” Her brows knit into a mask of worry.
“Let’s put on a mind numbing movie and just laugh our asses off for an hour, alright?” she says in English. I reply in Greek, savoring my time speaking my native tongue,
“Raise a toast with me first,” we both raise our mugs, “to Inanna, wherever she is, and to our penance, however long that may be.” She clinks her mug with mine and puts on a movie.
The two of us, the last of the gods, huddle together on a couch passing stories until the dawn, sharing our penance together. And if the next time we save the world, while the rest of our teammates are okay and eating a metric ton of pizza, I look at her across the room and mouth “This. This is why we do this” well that’s none of your business.
Sharing our penance is a little easier together.