Work Text:
Into Their Eyes
Violent waves that should have been impossible on a river crashed against the hull of their boat, sending jets of foaming water up, up, and up until they hit the lushly carpeted floor and drenched her summer dress. The water was a shock of cold, and she flinched backwards until her back hit a rough wooden wall. The water had soaked the light linen dress so completely that a puddle of dirty river water was beginning to form under her slipper-clad feet. Her skin, so used to being treated royally, rebelled against the assault of cold and biting sensations. She shivered into herself, and found that no part of her had been spared by the river. Even her hair hung around her face, limp and lifeless. The dress was sticking to her already clammy skin, and she resisted the urge to pull it outwards with her fingers. It was like she was wearing nothing more than her undergarments. Resolutely, she kept her hands at her sides; didn’t reach up to cover anything and embarrass herself further. She knew it was ridiculous that there was a storm raging, that an entire army was chasing after them, and she was worrying over how she was presenting herself. Still, what else could she do?
Distantly, men shouted to each other, their voices dampened by the gale. She couldn’t understand a word that was being said.
How many stories had her nurses told her, of beautiful princesses than ran away from their kingdoms in pursuit of true love? There had been countless many, and in each of them, those princesses had left in much more glory than her. She was Medea Aeetilades, the princess of Colchis.
Ever since her birth, men and women and children had knelt at her feet. And still, she was being ignored and rained on and entirely pushed to the corner of the narrative.
A day ago, she had been Medea Aeetilades; the stunning princess, the almost-woman that would bring her entire country pride by marrying a rich prince of a far-off land.
Today, she was Medea Aeetilades; a part of the treasure that Jason and his crew had brought back from their travels; something to be forgotten under the more insistent pressures of a navy trying to sink their ship, a storm trying to drown them all.
A conch horn sounded, loud and ringing. It cut through the wind and the fog in her head, and Medea cleared her head, looked out towards the bright light that shone from the ships behind them. The wooden wall dug into her back; she leant into the feeling.
Standing there, the navy that she had so recently had so much power over chasing this boat to kill everyone but her and still only worrying about her own grandeur, Medea suddenly felt deserving of only one title, that she had only ever been awarded once. Medea Aeetilades; a witch incapable of human attachment. It had been a poet, having wandered around her palace too late at night and having seen too much for his mind to comprehend. He hadn’t been wholly wrong. Her father had put him to death for it.
The wall behind her gave a mighty creak, shaking her from her thoughts that finally convinced her to leave the safety of her alcove and at least try to help her new husband. Everywhere she looked, there was frantic movement partially obscured by a thick curtain of water falling from all directions. Her extremities had long since numbed, but a familiar fire was beginning to burn at the tips of her fingers. Picking up the tattered and torn train of her dress, she started toward the scuffling piles of men, trying desperately to keep their ship afloat. For all the fates watching her, Medea felt like a particularly wretched peasant girl, with her clothes beyond repair and her clipped, nervous movements.
‘My good sir!’ Even her voice had gone hoarse. Had she already lost the accent that had taken her years to perfect; that dripped aristocratic condescension?
The man she had called dropped the bucket he was wielding and cautiously approached her, like he wasn’t sure of the proper etiquette for addressing former royals that had escaped their country in disgrace for the promise of ruling over a better nation.
‘Madame?
‘Would you know where I could find my dearest husband?’ She asked, and the usually sweet suggestions she could have carefully articulated were transformed into shrill yelling by the wind.
The man that was now in front of her, shrinking into his shoulders in discomfort, only gestured that she follow him.
As they both marched down to the inner quarters of the boat, lifting their legs high to avoid splashing in the ankle-deep water, Medea realised that she had never felt so sufficiently humiliated as she did now. She could only pray that Thessaly was worth this.
Finally, they reached the thankfully much drier and much warmer interior of the ship. Medea was mildly disappointed that the luxurious carpets and décor had been so mutilated by the storm and stalemate outside. Jason, her husband, stood with his back to her, animatedly waving his hands at the five other people in the room and shouting despite the din being muffled almost completely.
The man hung back as she entered the room. Beautiful tapestries and maps that detailed the entirety of the known world had once hung on these walls. They had been reduced to nothing more that mildewy scraps of paper. But Jason still stood at the head of the table with his back to her, flanked by Princes and geniuses and war-heroes, looking for all the world like he was standing in the most lavish of halls.
Around his shoulders hung the Golden Fleece.
Ever since she had been old enough to remember them, people had told her stories of that thing. It was created by our Lord of the Sea, Poseidon. They would say to her. Only the most worthy could slay his son, the Golden Ram, and his gift to that person – your great-grandfather – was the fleece that fell from that ram in death. There is no curse it cannot break; no drought it cannot end; no plague it cannot cure. And we have been trusted to protect it. And if her brother was ever there, he would choose that moment to break the story and ask her, Do you promise me that, if it comes to it, you will protect that Fleece with your life? And, of course, Medea would nod, always sure of her place in this world.
(And if, one day, her brother had stopped asking her, and she had instead overheard him asking her guards whether they would sacrifice their princess for the Fleece, well, she would never be seeing him again anyway.)
Now, as she stared at that very fleece, so casually draped over the shoulders of the man she wanted to love, Medea wondered whether Jason had ever needed to show anything an ounce of respect in his entire life. This was the most precious thing in his ownership by miles, and he had it on his shoulders like some common sheepskin. The bolt of anger the fuelled the fire burning at her fingers, scorched her nerves and could have boiled water if she had let it. Medea took a breath, shoved all her anger down to a place only she could reach. Jason turned around.
‘Oh, my love!’ He exclaimed, as though he had been turning the drenched ship inside out looking for her. ‘I have men looking everywhere for you! My beautiful dove, I beg you, now that you are here, stay and shelter yourself in our quarters.’ He spread his arms out magnanimously as though she should be grateful for his kindness.
‘Dearest, it is my duty as your wife and the one who loves you to remain by your side, on your arm, during the trying times of our life together. I will stay where I belong.’ Her words should have been high and sweet, so why could she hear the razor edge they held? She was not angry at Jason.
His shoulders shook with silent laughter as he turned around and silently dismissed his men, who dispersed casually to wherever they were needed. The pure purpose with which even men who had none walked never failed to amaze her.
‘From the moment I pledged myself to you, I promised to uphold your every wish,’ he said easily. Medea smile and could feel the strain of it in her cheeks.
‘Thank you for your aid.’ She said to the silent crewman behind her, and he left without a word.
Medea stepped forward, and finally spoke the words that had been burning in her fingers.
‘Jason. I can help you. I know my family, and I know my country, and I know we can lose them. But we need my help.’ She took her hands out of her cloak, and shook her red-hot fingers at him for emphasis. She could do anything with that heat. She could conjure winds to take them to safety; mists to hide them from violent eyes; sea serpents guard the path behind them; anything.
Jason had lost his easy demeanour, and his shoulders had a tension to them that she had only ever seen around her magic.
‘Just. Keep your hands away from me. We will only use your capabilities if we absolutely need to.’ He spoke, his eyes fluttering around the rooms and landing everywhere but on her. Jason stood up fully, and still avoiding her gaze, left the room with heavy steps, walking around her with a wide berth.
Alone in the dilapidated cabin, Medea stared at her hands. They had been a blessing from Hecate, the patron goddess of magic and witchcraft herself. Medea had always been fascinated by the Golden Fleece, by the magic that created it. She had spent long hours on top of that hill with only its dragon guardian, Peleus, for company. It was only luck that on one of those days when she was resting against the dragon that some drunk nobles’ sons had wandered up the hill.
----
She had been there for hours, imagining over and over again the amazing adventures that the Fleece and its ram must have been through, to end up pinned against this one tree. On that day every year since her mother had left in the night without a trace when she was twelve – still a child even in the greedy eyes of her father’s court – Medea had ended up against Peleus, breathing in the animal’s unnatural warmth and wishing she had even a fraction of that warmth in her own veins. She heard the two young men before she saw them, their metal greaves and helmets clanking loudly like they always did on the bodies of inexperienced soldiers. Turning around and craning her neck to see who they were, Medea had found herself staring at two boys. They were swaying under the influence of too much wine and too little discipline, dressed up in what looked like their fathers’ military facades and wielding those short, stubby knives that fathers kinder than her own gave their daughters when those daughters went walking on the streets.
The two boys had stopped dead before the dragon, who breathed a lazy puff od smoke towards them, moving against her to curl tighter around his tree and the Fleece.
‘Hey, what would your father say if you brought home one of that creatures’ scales, and had it up on your wall before he came home tonight?’ One of the boys was asking, and Medea rolled her eyes. Peleus was hundreds of years old and these children were barely older than she was.
‘He’d,’ the other boy’s words were cut short for a hiccup, and the two dissolved into a fit of drunken laughter, ‘He’d probably let me out of town without a personal guard, at least!’
‘I dare you.’
‘You want me to go up to the dragon that guards the most precious thing in our entire country, and rip part of his skin off?’
The first boy laughed, ‘I’ll do it with you, you big sheep.’ And stepped forward, with the other boy half a step behind him. They continued talking in hushed voices, staring at Peleus every so often as though they suspected he could hear them. Medea had entertained the same fantasy too, but it had stopped after she turned ten. One of them said something that seemed to relax them both, as they stepped further forward with their knives raised, however tentatively.
Medea scrambled up from behind Peleus, and the two boys stepped back in stunned unison.
‘You can’t disfigure Peleus – the King would have your own hides for it, and before he can, Peleus will burn you beyond ash!’
The first boy laughed, but this time it was pointed and sneering. ‘You named this beast?’ He asked incredulously, exchanging snorts with his friend. After looking at her a minute, he started again, but this time his words were slow and slurred and leering. ‘I’ll tell you what, the first one of us to rip a scale from him gets to marry you?’
Medea could accept getting treated like a particularly fine piece of meat from the courtiers, but these children could not be afforded the same respect. And even besides that, she had always wanted to see what Peleus’ fires could do when they were pointed at someone. So, she smiled, and raised her chin to look them in the eyes. ‘I will promise you this – if either one of you puts your hands on this beast, I will do things to you that you will never forget.’ She said, her voice breathless and soft and nothing like her own.
The two of them looked at each other, shrugged and stepped forward.
Was it too much to resign these two to becoming nothing more than burnt patches of grass? Medea had been in no headspace to answer than question.
It was only when Peleus gave a great roar of pain, but did nothing to defend himself from the artless knife strokes of the two children intent on taking his hide, that Medea remembered her tutor – Peleus will never harm any citizen of Colchis unless the King gives his express permission.
It was through a lens of tears that Medea saw two golden scales presented to her triumphantly. They were still dripping with blood and threads of viscera.
It was through a lens of tears, that Medea took those scales, and shoved them through the throats of both boys. Only one of them had made a sound, a strangled gasp as his eyes blinked rapidly as though he could believe what was happening.
It was with clear eyes, clear head, clear voice, that Medea knelt beside both of them, put one hand ever so gently at their wounds, and twisted as viciously as she knew how.
She had never felt so present as when she looked at the two dying souls before her and whispered, ‘I warned you what would happen if either of you were to ever harm my friend.’ She had looked straight into their eyes as she had spoken.
That night, Hecate had come to her in her dreams, and gifted her hands, still stained with scarlet blood. Every time Medea used her magic, she relived that memory, her hands once again stained fresh and bloody as they had been on that day, and she had still never once regretted it.
----
Blinking hard, Medea tore her eyes from her hands and took off after her husband, clenching her hands once again into fists tight enough that no one could see the traces of blood slowly burning and staining itself onto her fingers.
Lamplight from the ships giving them chase was streaming through the think blanket of stormy fog, and Medea could tell that there was no avoiding a scuffle. Still, she kept her hands shut tight. Jason had a plan, she was sure, and there was no denying that she was not experienced in the bloody art of war. What she was experienced in was keeping quiet and waiting for her time to strike, so that was what she would do.
Soundlessly, she slipped between knots of sailors talking in hushed voices, pointing at her fleet that was fast approaching. Just under the protruding basket of the ship’s crow’s nest, there was an alcove where no one would ever find her, where she would be able to watch everything unfold.
The rope ladder swung wildly as she grabbed it with one hand, still trying to keep her mess of a gown from ripping completely. In that moment, she rued the day it had been decided that she would be a woman. The rope rubbed blisters into her delicate hands and swung around wildly under pressure from both the wind and her own weight. How much more humiliation would she have to endure today?
Finally, finally, she reached the alcove, and sank to her knees, huddling around herself in a bid for warmth. She set her eyes to the horizon and settled in to watch the action unfold.
-----------------------------
Medea had always known, in a detached, objective sense, that the army of Colchis did not take prisoners, that their navy was the strongest in Greece, that their soldiers were as cruel and swift as wolves. Seeing it for her own eyes was something different.
Bile gathered in her mouth as she watched with half-shut eyes. Soldiers that she had been raised to respect and garner respect from cut sailors down with cold efficiency. Unwillingly, she was reminded of the cattle they sacrificed before every harvest seasons. The water in the ship was running red and thick and Medea didn’t know where to put her eyes, so that they would be free of the nightmare she was trapped in. Through the clouding terror in her mind, Medea wondered for the first time whether running away with Jason had been the correct decision.
The storm was dying down now, and it wasn’t loud enough to hide the sounds of clashing metal and screaming men. She had been promised peace and power and love, not this senseless bloodshed. What was happening?
The crow’s nest shook with the force of a sailor thrown against it. He was clutching his bleeding stomach, speaking fast and incoherent without any audience to bear witness to his last words. She had to stop this. She knew she could. She had to find her husband.
Her hands grew painfully hot as she jumped down from her alcove thirty feet above the ship’s deck and landed painlessly. The heat spread up her arms and through her chest as she sent out a call for Jason to find her, a plea for no one else to see her.
Standing in the middle of a battle scene from the paintings hanging in the palace the used to be hers, Medea felt tears burning at the back of her eyelids; resolutely closed her eyes against them. Her ankles were stained brown.
‘I told you not to use your magic.’ Jason stood before her, and she opened her eyes to a vision in red and gold painted in the broad brushstrokes of anger and desperate ignorance.
‘What else could I do?’ She whispered, the words soft and incongruous against a backdrop of violence and nothing more.
‘Just. Just, stay inside. We will get through this.’ His voice was rough. He walked away before she could respond.
This place – hell – was not something she could come out victorious against. She would go inside. She would survive and weather this storm and never think about it again. What else was there that she could do?
(Resolutely, she ignored the small voice in her heart that raged against Jason’s disrespect, that insisted she use her magic and move them all to safety. And if that voice also said that she should use her magic to force respect into her husband, she ignored that too).
She had her eyes closed, her entire body burning with pent up magic that her emotions begged she release, trusting that heat to lead her to her quarters, when she hit another body. He stood straight and so much taller than her. He was huge and stocky where she was tiny and built like a porcelain bird. There was a sword in his hands, decorated in blood. Her hands were red and stained with blood from years past. And yet, they looked so painfully similar. Years of growing up together; genes that matched perfectly; having been raised to hold the same regal bearing; Medea stared into the face of her brother.
‘Did you truly believe I would not find you, witch?’
Absyrtus Aeetilades was the perfect heir to a throne symbolising the spirit of a hungry, cruel people that worshipped only that which was unknown and too powerful for them to kill.
Medea would always see him as two different people – the brother she had once had before Hecate, and the enemy she had always had after Hecate. Maybe Absyrtus saw her like that too – once a vulnerable, kind child, and then an unholy witch.
But it was he who had come to her quarters the night after she changed, a burning torch and ceremonial knife in hand. He hadn’t known that the torch was symbolic of the goddess of witchcraft, that Medea would never feel the burn of flames again.
Medea had not burnt at the pyre of cushions and soft bedsheets that her brother had built for her that night, nor had she been felled by his knife; still, a part of her had died that night.
Every time he tried something like that afterwards, more and more of her died.
So maybe it was his own fault that enough of Medea was dead when she was finally able to face him on even footing, her magic alive inside of her.
She looked straight into his eyes.
Absyrtus only had time to smile, his eyes alight with a joy that should have had no place in a bloodbath, before Medea’s burning hands, burning powers, burning hatred, cut him into nine pieces that all cluttered to her feet in a shocking thud.
His head was separate from his neck. His stocky limbs were severed from his torso. There was no more he. There were only pieces that once fit together to form a person.
Her whole body was trembling as she looked at what had been her brother. She should be crying. She should not be relieved. Absyrtus Aeetilades. Medea Aeetilades. They had been blood siblings. They were supposed to have shared un unbreakable bond. What was wrong with her? Why –
If she thought about it anymore, she would go mad.
Her mind was empty as she picked up what used to be her brother, and with the same shroud of silence as a father walking his daughter across the bridal aisle, threw one piece of him into the river on every side of the ship.
His head, she tossed over the southside of the ship, where the fighting was strongest, where the bridge between the two ships was a tangible wooden board. In some probably sick sense, she thought he would appreciate being where the blood flowed heaviest. His limbs, she scattered around the back of the ship. Everything else went over the sides in unceremonious splashes.
Medea was acutely aware of her own form, the delicate tendons that strung together her own parts. It wasn’t hard to imagine those tendons cut, her body no longer her own. Phantom blood and muscle dripped from her hair, her fingers, down her face. She closed her eyes against the sensation as she walked back up to the crow’s nest. If she succumbed to the temptation of reaching up, cleaning the sins from her body, she would tear out her own eyes.
Maybe Absyrtus did not deserve such a cruel fate. Maybe he had tried to be the best person he knew how to be. But he had still tried to kill her when she had been a child and so many times after that; it was still he who had ripped her love for him out of her with bade and fire and rope. Even so, maybe she should have felt regret. She did not. Remorse, disgust, visceral fear; but not regret.
Finally, she had reached the crow’s nest. Climbing that ladder was so much easier now. She didn’t once think about how she must look. This time, she climbed straight past her alcove, past the mingling shadows that had served her so well. This time, Medea went straight to the top, where she could be seen by all.
Absyrtus Aeetilades is dead. Her fingers were burning charred marks into the wooden railing of the basket atop the crow’s nest as her voice rang through the ears of both parties. I killed him. I – a piercing shout broke her from her speech. Her father hand sunk to his knees in the midst of enemy fighters, that were all still staring at her. He was wailing and muttering to his general. Medea could see the tears that gathered in his eyes, regardless of the distance between them. She couldn’t help wondering if he would have reacted the same was if it had been Absyrtus standing where she did, declaring her dead. She closed her eyes for a fraction of time and continued. Unless you stop this fighting, and concentrate upon finding his body immediately, Hades will not accept the Prince of Colchis into his realm. I will tell you that his is in nine parts at the floor of this river. I will tell you that you have another twenty-one minutes to find his pieces. I will not tell you anything more.
Medea had been raised the Princess of Colchis, she knew how to address a crowd. She knew how to project her voice and remain cold and uncaring despite the tragic news she conveyed.
Medea would never have believed that those skills would remain with her as she blackmailed her father, the King, after murdering her own brother like the amoral witch he called her.
Her hands were growing colder, and with that loss of heat, she found she was quickly losing strength. She backed up against the wooden pole at the centre of the crow’s nest, and sank to her knees, head between her arms as she tried her damndest to ignore the world around her. Intellectually, Medea knew that she would never be able to forget the day, but that didn’t stop her from wishing with all the power within her that she could go back to being that girl with the light summer dress, whose greatest trouble with life was that her hair had frizzed from stormy air.
-------------------------
It had been more than a week since they left Colchis. After peace had resumed, Medea had circled her ship for ten hours straight, one hour for each piece of her brother, and one hour for herself and the girl that she had been. Then she had thanked Hecate with the promise of a sacrifice and tried to move on.
‘My Love, please tell me where we will be next docking our ship?’ She would distract herself on whatever island they landed in, try and leave her memories on those foreign shores.
Jason looked at her blankly, flanked by his advisors, the so-called Gemini Twins.
‘The island of Corinth.’ He said finally. ‘We will take refuge there for a month until the damages to our vessel can be repaired, and until the crew is in a shape fit to continue sailing. We will dock in the evening.’ The skin around his left eye twitched as he stared at her, somewhere between her eyes and her nose. He looked different – almost sickly. Medea’s stomach clenched when she realised what he must be going through. The loss of almost a third of his crew; it must have been devastating.
And, she realised, he was no longer wearing the Golden Fleece around him.
‘While we are there, perhaps the two of us could take a walk around the town. I could take your mind off your worries. You can confide in me – I will be behind you through the good and the bad times, now.’ Medea said, softly. She looked straight into Jason’s eyes.