Work Text:
The Mask Rule
The Mask Rule is simple, live your entire life behind the mask, if this were to break you either have to kill him if he’s an enemy, or else the option is to love him.
However, what kind of love could exist within the Sanctuary?
While you train all day long, while you overcome inhuman trials, while you’re taught that the only way is the one of Athena, but at the same time you have to face hunger, mockery, loneliness.
Her Teacher wasn’t a kind one, just as she wasn’t kind to her student, her colleagues weren’t either, just as she was not with anyone else, she didn’t remember her family as her family most likely didn’t remember her…
But what she did remember, was that stupid kid that dared look at her face, smile back at her and tell her she was pretty.
And she didn’t react at first, because nobody smiled at her and when he did, she remembered her mask and the Rule that came with it, and she hated it.
She hated Marin for preventing her from attacking him at first, she hated herself for knowing that she was right and having to wait until the kid earned his Cloth so she could face him fairly, she hated Seiya for becoming strong enough to avoid his murder by her claws…
And then she remembered that she had no option, if she couldn’t kill, she had to love him. And she tried to do it, she stood in the way of his attacks and lost her disciple Cassius for not being strong enough… Despite that she kept pursuing Pegasus, and her own calling as a Saintess of Athena onto Asgard, onto Poseidon’s Sanctuary…
How many times had her mask been broken in the process?
How many times she hadn’t paid mind to it any longer.
Because she had finally understood.
While seeing Seiya fight alongside the others, and more importantly seeing Seiya live, what was the real meaning of the Mask Rule.
That’s why then, many years later she could show her face in front of Kouga, Seiya or the young Saints without complicating herself, because the meaning of the Mask Rule wasn’t to live bound to that Mask, going out of her way to kill or love someone, but rather defending her own pride as a Saintess in front of the enemy and at the same time loving and protecting those that were her family, her friends and colleagues.
And if there was anything she had learned of her lost friends (the Golden Saints, Cassius…), and of all her life as a Saintess, was that the Mask was there to represent her dedication and loyalty as a Saintess of Athena, instead of her love or hate.
And that’s because those belonged to her, and not to a piece of metal.