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If you look for Death you will find him, it is not the matter of simply wanting, it is a matter of searching. With War, it is a touch more difficult to distinguish. You find him and Death in the same place, amidst battle and blood and the tense silence between one breath and the next.
Emily doesn’t remember how she found Mars instead of Letum, but she thinks this is a kinder thing that she could offer her mother than a flag.
Mars is charming, they always are. He speaks of her talent, of her family gift, given to them by Poseidon. He speaks of battles that she had spent her whole life studying, and he praises her beauty no matter how covered in blood she is. And so, Emily finds herself falling bit by bit.
He keeps Letum away, slinging an arm over broad shoulders and referencing past events in front of Emily, and she thanks him because it means her compatriots can survive another day.
Then, one day, her stomach starts swelling. They send her back, and she goes without a fight, a little numb, more than a little shell shocked and wondering how she’s going to explain this to her mother. Emily had promised she would do better instead of just being reckless with herself like she was back then.
Her mother says nothing. She pokes at Emily’s belly, asks for Mars’s name and then takes her to the OBGYN.
Emily waits for the condemnation, the exasperated looks, the disowning, the yelling. It never comes, she waits breathless for seven months for the bitter words and chidings. They never come.
“Zexi,” Mother says, and all Emily can think is this is it. “What will you name the child?”
Emily pauses, breathes, thinks of Letum, thinks of Mars, thinks of her grandfather seething at the Romans that kicked him out.
“I,” she says, “have no fucking clue.”
Mother nods like she expected it and brings Emily a book. The title proudly says: Names Not Cursed By The Gods And Guarnteed To Keep Your Demigod Baby From Being Name Dragged by Lucina Juno.
Emily is silent for a moment, takes the book and walks away. She didn’t want to know how her mother had come upon this book which looked brand new.
She comes out with Fai for a boy and Xue for a girl. Frank and Sue when Anglicized. A bit basic but apparently most gods didn’t have a grudge according to Lucina’s book and Emily was more keen to keep it that way.
Soon enough she’s in the hospital room, gasping and crying as she trembles and forces out her child.
Mars appears. Childbirth was a battlefield after all. His eyes are suns behind his glasses and his hands are gentle as he holds her hands.
Pull yourself together, soldier, he whispers lovingly to her.
Emily does and two hours later she’s holding Zhang Fai and she tries not to burst into tears.
Her mother takes them home, and Juno comes with them.
She points at the firewood and Emily knows she can already feel Fai turning cold in her arms and his lips are tinged blue. Her mother lunges and pulls the firewood out, Fai takes a breath and the firewood goes out but the burns remain.
Emily thanks Juno as best she can and locks the firewood in a vault at the bottom of the house. No one would ever think anything of it and it was fine. As long as she could pretend she didn’t see Letum watching her with sad golden eyes that she had seen a year ago during the war she could convince herself that it was perhaps a cosmic prank.
She still never takes the firewood out.
She goes to war. She looks for war. She finds only death.