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Herodotus watched Deimos and Kassandra sparring on the beach; a warm-up, so they told, for Kassandra’s upcoming fight with one of the few remaining sages. Herodotus suspected it was only because they enjoyed the fight, the edge of Kassandra’s sword screeching across Deimos’ Kopis as he parried her swift blow.
Kassandra, quick as thought - too quick for Deimos to follow - leapt back from where she’d fallen off-balance, clumsily retreating to get the distance to recover and Deimos followed, a large overhand strike that Kassandra caught on her sword, sent him sprawling when his bigger weight carried him forward and she kicked his knees to down him. They’d been going at it for hours - the sand all scuffed up around them, in their hair and clothes and ears - but they’d not yet tired, and it was a better thing to watch than Barnabas arguing with Brasidas about where the best food came from because they’d go at it for hours more.
Such a rare thing, Herodotus thought to himself, to have the time and space to sit and stare, watching his daughter warm to he and Barnabas. Watching her warm to Deimos after she’d convinced him to stay on the Adrestia, listening to him talk for long hours into the night as he shared in bits and pieces the ragged wounds on his soul, pulling from his shoulders his tunic and laying that piece of armour aside to bare his scars for her to see, just as Kassandra bared her own scars that she’d shown he and Barnabas late at night when the darkness made her brave.
Deimos grinned when he picked himself up, taking his sword from Kassandra when she flipped it one-handed and offered it with a smug grin. “Rematch?” He said, because everyone knew they would fight until they fell asleep, there on the beach, all tangled together and on top of one another like a pile of puppies. Sometimes with Brasidas and more rarely with Stentor, but always when the two of them sparred.
Herodotus didn’t think Deimos was bad, on the whole. Wounded - terribly wounded, in ways not even the best healer, not even Hippokrates himself, could help with - but he had calmed from that manic, angry thing Kassandra had brought home, hunched shoulders like risen hackles hackles all smoothed down as he learned that none of them would hurt him, would turn his nightmares and his kisses for Brasidas and the nights he didn’t sleep, up and pacing the deck like a wolf circling its cage, against him.
He had always decided to speak as he found, had no use for people who saw and judged; Herodotus had never had a bad word from Deimos, and the boy seemed to like Barnabas well enough too - sat at his feet and pretended he wasn’t enraptured by every one of his tales of the open sea. Fit in well with the crew, of few words to them but those words not unkind, and certainly had Kassandra’s taste for speeding across the sea, looking for the next fight with a pack of pirates circling like sharks.
Ah, Herodotus smiled; Deimos was so like Kassandra. She was there in his every sure-footed step when the two of them fell into fighting stances, posturing like irate cats and grinning because they knew how ridiculous they looked. There in him offering his hand to Lykaon, Ikaros, every dog who happened to cross his path. There in him coming to them, to Herodotus and Barnabas and Nikolaos, for the small things he could admit he needed help with; little cuts on his hands, his arms, his head when he fell and cut himself on a rock, a speeding fist to his mouth splitting his lip. There in those baby steps to trusting them same as Kassandra's baby steps when she asked for help patching her clothes.
There in the shape of his face, even; the roughness of his palm. It didn’t matter that those things were inherited, that Myrrine or Pythagoras had given them their looks and familiarity with swords the calluses tough on their hands; they were like each other, no mirrored things as, perhaps, they could have been, but enough that Herodotus saw Deimos in Kassandra, too.
Deimos was blunt, spoke his mind as Kassandra spoke hers, had no use for half-words and games. He understood death, blood warm down his wrists, splashed across his gauntlets, his cuirass; inured to it as she was, had stopped seeing the tragedy in a corpse when it wasn’t one she cared for. Understood pain and loss better than anyone, the pain of family ripped away too soon. There was his shoulders made miniature in her, his tallness and breadth and strength. There was his grin when he showed teeth to a pirate, a bandit - blood splashed across his face from the one falling dead at his feet, wild as Ares. Not mirrored, but alike, just as they didn’t mirror but were like Nikolaos.
The both of them were like he and Barnabas. He rubbed his eyes, his head, but it didn’t change the fact that even when he threw Kassandra halfway down the beach and stabbed his sword into the sand dangerously close to her ear, pride loud in his shout as he won, Herodotus could see there was cleverness in Deimos, and a love for the sea-wind blowing in, for Poseidon’s waters blue and beautiful stretching out until the ends of the earth, that everyone on the Adrestia shared.
“Herodotus!” Kassandra cried, kicking sand indignantly at Deimos. “He cheated!”
“I did not!” Said Deimos.
Both of them, Herodotus thought, had Barnabas’ whinging. “You are both wet and covered in sand,” Herodotus told them, “Neither of you have won. Come, put some clean clothes on so Kassandra can go find this Sage, you are both making me miserable just seeing you.” He ushered them both up the ramp. “Do not get sand on this deck! Sandals off, now!”
The both of them scowling, Kassandra because Herodotus hadn’t sided with her and Deimos because he’d never shaken off his dislike for orders, and perhaps never would, they took off their sandals and armour and left it in a pile for one of the crew to clean up, shaking off the worst of the sand and retreating below deck to change. Nikolaos smiled t them, and Herodotus lifted his chin a little proudly because there were few enough people either of them listened to, and only the one who they would obey orders from.
Barnabas called a friendly word to them, abandoning his argument with Brasidas with a huff and going below with them, friendly arm slung around Kassandra's shoulders and Deimos close in his shadow, head ducked low but smiling. Sweet even though he boasted about how easy it would be to kill all of them if he'd been trying; he didn't mean it, loved Kassandra in whatever way Chrysis' abuse had left him with too much to do it. Maybe he'd come to care for the rest of them, too, in his way; gentle as he could make himself when he cuffed Barnabas' arm, punched Stentor passing them by.
Herodotus turned to look back out across the water, rubbed his beard in thought. Nodded to himself, because what harm was there in a son? Herodotus liked Deimos well enough - Barnabas, too, and he'd said as much over a shared bottle late at night when brother and sister were asleep, wouldn't be with them laughing as Kassandra tried to shoo Lykaon from her bed if he didn't. It would be good to have another child, one who could stand beside Kassandra and at once tussle over a clean tunic, ruthlessly tickling her sides, and who could appear out of thin air when the power in her blood summoned him to shove two feet of sword through a man’s skull for her. And maybe, selfishly, it would be good to have Deimos on his side, sharing the quiet of the early dawn watching the sunrise together because something about watching the light on the water calmed them both in the tight press of the ship, someone to sit with Barnabas when Kassandra was off hunting the Cult and he fell into one of his rare sombre moods; someone to watch the sea and sky and offer his awkward, gruff affection just to cheer him up a little, make him laugh because Deimos was terrible at affection.