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Kazuya stands on the edge of a precipice. Below, the cerulean waves churn and break against the rocky cliffsides. Above, the clouds chase one another on wispy wings across the sky.
High in the blue-tipped atmosphere, Apollo’s golden chariot glitters as he arcs through his domain in pursuit of his divine duty. For all that he is a god of plague, he is also a god of life; it is he who guides the sun chariot across the sky, to bestow those life-giving rays upon the earth below.
Up ahead, Kazuya can only just make out the silhouette of his father, indistinguishable at this distance from a true winged soul. He curves and dips, his form traversing perfectly the vast neutral space between sea and sky.
I warn you, Icarus, Toku had said, fly in a middle course. If you go too low, the water may weight your wings; if you go too high, the fire may burn them. Shape your course where I shall lead.
Kazuya breathes in deeply, holding in a lungful of salt-tempered sea breeze. He closes his eyes, spreads his wings, and falls.
***
Flight, Kazuya thinks, is a wonderous thing. His father’s genius is evident in the design of the wings—the leather straps lie comfortably against his thin chiton, and the graduated feathers that make up the pinions supply him with the perfect amount of aerodynamic lift on each downstroke.
As he angles toward the open sea, he hears shouts from below. King Minos’s men have spotted them, but without flight capability of their own, there is no way for the king’s men to give chase.
And there is no way for the Cretan king to replicate his father’s designs, either. Before they left, Kazuya and Toku took care to coax a small flame from the last of the candles, thus ensuring that nothing remained of the designs from their tower workshop except for ash.
Kazuya had watched, impassive, as the sheets of parchment curled and blackened at the edges, the thin animal skin disintegrating as the flames flickered and danced.
The work isn’t lost for good, though. His father has memorized every single design he’s created during the years they have spent as prisoners, and his mind is filled to the brim with ideas for dozens more. In all the world, there is no one more deserving to bear the epithet of Daedalus the Architect.
With two flaps of his wings, Kazuya soars past the isle of Dia. Now he has truly left the safety of land behind; there is nothing keeping him from being swallowed up by the sea except for his own two wings.
As he gazes back at the stone tower which has served as his prison and his home, Kazuya’s heart flickers in between shades of warm vermillion. In the hollows of his spine, cold nostalgia settles with the ease of an old convention.
***
He had spent two entire years of his adult life locked in the tower, but it hadn’t been entirely bad. After all, he had met him.
Phoebus Apollo, the light-bringer, god of the sun. For a single euphoric month, Kazuya had spent nearly every day in the god’s company. As dawn swept her rosy glow over the horizon, bleeding away the midnight ink of night to deepest purple, brilliant orange and finally pale gold, Kazuya made the climb out his window and up the ledge to the roof of the tower, where the birds loved to roost.
And Apollo would meet him there, arriving in the shape of a raven, only to change into a man as his feet graced the stone roof, away from the prying eyes of others.
Sometimes, he would play his lyre, soft words hummed in a lost tongue to compliment his delicate melodies. Sometimes, he would sit and idly gossip with Kazuya about the latest drama to befall one of his many relatives.
But always, Kazuya would be awash in a vision of gold, gold, gold.
Everything always seemed noticeably brighter in Sawamura’s presence, as if he was not only a source of light, but also the very cynosure around which light gathered. Kazuya felt himself inexorably drawn to Sawamura, falling into the sun god’s orbit with the inevitability of a planet caught in the gravity well of a star.
Apollo's daily visits had not gone unnoticed by all. “It seems that Icarus has caught the eye of a god,” the guards would say, a tinge of celadon jealousy in the contours of their words. Certainly, Kazuya wears a face that could easily launch a thousand ships, though his forceful personality would blow any such ill-fated mariners off course long before they reached their destination.
Toku had seemed troubled when he discovered his son was god-favored, when Kazuya let slip that the sun god encouraged him to call him by his true name. “Sawamura” had rolled off his tongue with familiar ease, and it wasn’t until Kazuya heard his father’s sharp intake of breath that he realized his mistake.
It had been the subject of their most bitter argument, which ended only after weeks with a cold stalemate.
Kazuya is well aware that nothing good ever befell those mortals who were favored by the gods. But Toku needn’t have worried. One day to the month that Sawamura first appeared, he stopped showing up just as easily as he first arrived.
Kazuya still has no idea why he caught the sun god’s interest, or why he lost it. And no matter how fervently he prayed, Sawamura never returned.
In the weeks since, Kazuya had tried his hand at poetry. He kept his fumbling attempts hidden in a small wooden chest beneath his bed, sealed behind a lock not even his father could disengage.
Some things are just not meant for others to see.
Even so, he found that it was much easier to lock away the sheafs of parchment, than it was to lock away the shards of his heart.
In the end, Kazuya slipped the papers into the fire alongside his own design drafts. The flames leapt joyously onto the dry parchment, hungry tongues of gold consuming it all in a matter of seconds. Nothing remained of his words, scattered to the winds on dissipating curlicues of pale smoke.
Now, Sawamura will never know how he feels.
Inside his chest, his heart constricted painfully. He knows that his feelings have extended deep roots; he will not be able to excise the growth without also removing a fundamental part of himself in the process.
I love you, I love you, I love you, his heart sings in a litany, a prayer.
There is an ancient malady that Kazuya discovered, deep in the forbidden section of the libraries of his youth. Flowers, unique to one’s beloved, sprouting in the lungs from an unrequited love. The cure: surgery, death, or reciprocation.
That particular illness has not been documented amongst mortals for many years. Though if it were, Kazuya knows exactly which blooms would garland his lungs. For golden Apollo, what better likeness than the sunflower?
How beautiful, to have your very adorations manifest as your salvation or demise.
If Sawamura asked, Kazuya would gladly offer up a bouquet of flowers, plucked from his own lungs. But gods like Apollo, who occupy a seat of honor on Mount Olympus, are not so easily satisfied with such paltry offerings.
All gods require sacrifice. As he gazes into the cinders, Kazuya thinks that he wouldn’t mind immolation. Not if it’s by Sawamura’s hands.
***
Ensconced within his golden chariot, Sawamura grows restless. It has been so very difficult staying away from Kazuya these past few months. From the infrequent tidings that Haruichi brings, Sawamura is aware at least that Kazuya has been doing well, though the inventor has been “somewhat moping,” in Persephone’s own words.
Though, really. What does the God of Spring know of ill-fated love? At least he and Furuya see each other for several months out of the year. It’s a better relationship than what most of the Pantheon enjoys, all things considered.
Sawamura sighs and peers at the earth below. His path should take him past Crete in the next few minutes.
Briefly, he spares a thought for Kazuya. By his calculations, the clever wings that the two inventors have built to facilitate their escape ought to be ready for flight any day now.
A movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. There, off the coast of Santorini, flies a pair of birds with plumage he’s never seen before.
Upon closer inspection, he discovers that those are not birds at all, but the very subjects of his musings. Through his god-sight, he takes note of the full spectrum of feathers that adorn their wings. Daedalus truly is an unparalleled inventor.
The pair are resplendent in the early afternoon light, though Sawamura finds his eyes lingering on Kazuya. If Sawamura had been mortal himself, he would absolutely believe them to be gods, arcing through the air under their own power.
He wants more than anything to slip into raven form, if not to speak to Kazuya, at the very least to gaze upon his face again. But he stops himself. The prophecy had been clear, even if the Moirai themselves are notoriously enigmatic.
Nearly a month after he first met Kazuya, he’d felt the band of tension that ringed his head like a circlet, the telltale sign of an oncoming vision.
Kazuya, whose laugh rivals the sweetest melodies. Even in his mind’s eye, he can replicate the sound perfectly. Sawamura might be the sun, but Kazuya’s smile outshines all the stars in the night sky.
Then, Atropos the Inflexible, her abhorrent shears poised over the rich brown thread of a mortal’s life. By her side, Lachesis the Allotter, her dark gaze boring into Sawamura’s own.
“Your destinies are entwined,” she said, her voice the slow grind of a glacier. “Two paths stretch out before him. He will live a long life though he will never again know true love, or he will live a short life with the one he loves by his side. By your hand, his path shall be determined.”
“What can I do?” Sawamura asked, in a voice laced with despair.
Lachesis glanced at him then, though her gaze was not unkind. “Dearest Apollo. I think you know the answer to that.”
At times like these, Sawamura almost resents his own prophetic abilities. It unmoors something in the cavern of his heart, that the Fates themselves have doomed the pair of them to such misfortune. Then again, love between a god and a mortal seldom ended well, doubly so on the part of the mortal.
This is for the best.
Kazuya deserves a long and happy life, free from the meddlesome whims of the gods.
He clenches his fist. His hand trembles, and he grips his wrist firmly in his other hand to steady it. All this godly power, but even he cannot challenge the Fates when it matters most.
The wheels of the chariot spin as the sun continues his solitary journey across the sky.
***
What would you be willing to sacrifice, for the one you love?
***
The two inventors have been flying for nearly an hour when Kazuya feels a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, as if he is being watched. He angles his face upward, and, there. A bright flash from between the clouds as Sawamura jerks away, embarrassed at being caught out.
Kazuya has always been more attuned than most to the sun god and his idiosyncratic tendencies. He wills his traitorous heart not to skip a beat. This changes nothing. It had been Sawamura, after all, who chose to end their association.
Though, as Kazuya flies farther and farther away from Crete, he can sense that his chance to finally confess is slipping away, trickling through his fingers to collect in a sandy mound at the base of an hourglass. He has to tell him, before it’s too late.
He needs to get closer.
Kazuya ignores his father’s shouts of warning as he flaps his wings with purpose. As he breaks through the clouds, he is treated to an uninhibited view of the sun god’s chariot. At this rarefied altitude, the winds snatch away his words when he tries to speak, so he turns inward to pray, hoping against all odds that Sawamura will hear him.
His mind tosses and turns, a ship caught in a swirling whirlpool’s maw. Doubt, that many-headed monster, begins to steal into his heart with each passing second, and carves out a home between the gaps of his confident facade.
Just as he is about to turn back—really, what had he expected—Sawamura appears before him, resplendent in his full auric glory. Here in the sun’s own realm, he’s bound to his true form, so bright that Kazuya needs to look away, but finds that he doesn’t want to.
For a moment, neither speaks.
Kazuya is the first to break the silence. As much as he pretended otherwise, he was never quite able to burn away his devotion, and the banked embers roar to life inside his guarded heart.
Oh, how he’s missed this. How he’s missed him.
“Sawamura,” he breathes, reverent.
The sun god inclines his head to indicate that he has heard him, but makes no move to speak or come closer.
“Sawamura,” Kazuya says again, lips curling around the name in a lover’s caress. There are a million things he wants to say, a million questions he wants to ask.
(What did you see in me? Why did you leave me? Was I not enough for you? Do you love me, as I love you?)
A stone, once it breaches the glassy surface of a pond, produces ripples that travel far beyond its point of entry. A feeling, once it breaches the sanctified walls of a heart, becomes as an ember, easily stoked into a blazing inferno.
“I love you,” Kazuya says, resolute. At Sawamura’s astonished expression, once more. “I love you.” Finally, “I love you,” he repeats, for the last time. The words pour forth from his lips in a litany, a prayer.
“Kazuya-“ Something cracks in the sun god’s stony facade as he lifts his right hand. He’s a hair's breadth away from cupping Kazuya’s cheek before he seems to come to his senses. The hand drops, though Kazuya notes that Sawamura absently flexes his fingers where they rest at his side.
Kazuya feels the phantom touch like a brand on his cheek. He burns. He craves more.
Tinder. Flint. Spark. This is immolation.
Sawamura looks poised to say something else, when his gaze slides beyond Kazuya to his wings. The dawning horror that spreads across his beautiful face must mirror the one on Kazuya’s own.
His father’s warning, seemingly from a lifetime ago, echoes in Kazuya’s mind. His father, who warned him not to fly too close to the sun, for fear that the fire may burn his wings.
He finally takes note of the infernal heat that emanates from the sun god. The air around him has taken on a shimmery quality, the heat refracting the light around him in waves, as if he is seeing everything through the filter of a watery surface.
With a glance over his shoulder, Kazuya absently notes that the wax holding the feathers to the wooden frame has all but liquefied, dripping like tears and splashing into the sea far below. The feathers themselves, loosened from their moorings, drift around him in the air like snowflakes.
***
He’s running out of time. Ananke, Chronos, the Moirai, Sawamura cannot help but curse them all. Even he, the mighty Phoebus Apollo, cannot hope to bend these primordial deities to his will. He wants to cry. He wants to scream.
It was never meant to be like this, he thinks in despair. We were supposed to have more time.
And yet. He is the god of prophecy, after all; he should know best that the Fates are never forthright.
***
I’m glad I told him, Kazuya thinks as he hurtles towards the sea. As the dark blue waters of the Aegean close over his head, he thinks he hears someone—Sawamura, probably—screaming his name.
I don’t mind at all, is the last thing he remembers, the flame in his heart sputtering out as he sinks into the cold embrace of the deep.
***
In all the ages since, the poets forever sing a song of woe—a favored tale of Melpomene, muse of tragedy.
Icarus, beloved of the sun.
He flew too high,
Loved too much;
Now, he’s gone.