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It’d been two thousand and five hundred years since the last time Joel had seen her.
He looked different now. His face was the same, same bone structure and the same eyes and eventually the same stubborn stripe of white that he had had. He dyed it green, now, the same color of the stones the two of them had found on the shore of the Mediterranean so long ago. They must have been polished glass, thrown into the sea millennia before, but the green he had now was something called peacock green. When his mother (his second mother, his first had died so many years before—) had seen him after he dyed it the first time, she nearly cried. Eventually, she had calmed, and then Joel had been swept up with his majors that he couldn’t always make it to their meetings.
He was studying abroad, pursuing a degree he couldn’t have found in the UK for whatever reason. So, now, he was in the middle of New York City of all places—vastly different from ancient Greece, and yet every once in a while he would spot something that reminded him achingly of his past life. When he had tried to research himself, research her, he couldn’t find anything. They’d been erased from history.
Sometimes, he wondered if it was just a simple dream.
But then he saw the birthmark in the mirror, remembered the sharp pain—the laughter of the two of them in Hera’s temple, swearing to one another never to part, cut through by the sharp blade of a poisoned knife and a jealous advisor’s whispering words in his ear. A curse on the river Styx that he might always remember. The feel of blood-slicked stone tiles beneath his palms as he desperately clawed his way to Lizzie, who was lying on her back and staring at the ceiling with wide eyes and a blank stare. Reaching for her, but never touching—his hand falling to the ground as the last of his strength left him, choking on his own breath, his own blood, and hearing the muffled, retreating steps of the man who had killed them both.
There were no gods, at least not the Olympians.
There was no Hades, no Tartarus, no Fields of Asphodel waiting for Joel on the other side of death. Instead, he woke up sitting on the pale carpet of a nursery with blue walls, Winnie the Pooh decals, and white furniture. There had been English on his tongue, but Ancient Greek in his mind. The white streak in his hair that had been there in his past life had yet to show itself. Just like before, it appeared when he was thirteen. Instead of calling it what he had in the past—a trophy he got from helping fight a hellhound—he simply called it a medical condition. Which…it might not be, he didn’t really have any of the other worries that his parents and doctors had feared. He just…had it.
Regardless, Joel was on his way to one of his classes for his other major—Creative Writing—and stopped by The Ambrosia Café. It was where he had been brought by one of his friends, Jimmy. Today, Jimmy was picking up his sister, Lizzie, and had asked Joel to meet them even if it was just briefly. He hadn’t known Jimmy for too long, he’d met him and his boyfriend Scott during the Critical Thinking class they had taken during the last spring semester and it was just fall of his third year now. If it helped, Jimmy and Scott lived in the same dorm room on the same floor as Joel, he had just been too depressed and too focused on his own research to meet people. Even his own roommate, Fwhip, had eventually just given up and gone to work with his blacksmithing buddies.
When Joel entered the Café, dressed in a pair of jeans that had paint splatters all over them in his very crude attempts to draw the protagonist of his book (every time he teared up too much, but he had to make the female point of view look like her. Even if he had brought living upon the Earth without her upon himself, she deserved more) and the same t-shirt he’d worn the day before and slept in, he glanced around for Jimmy and Scott. They were sitting at a booth, Jimmy talking animatedly with a girl with pale pink hair. Jimmy’s sister, I bet, he thought, turning to order.
He got his coffee—straight black with three shots worth of espresso, because he couldn’t handle anything else thanks to weeks’ worth of focus on Greek history—and walked towards the group. Sitting next to his sister, Jimmy sent a grin Joel’s way and then gestured to his sister. “Joel, meet—”
Joel’s heart dropped to the floor beneath him when he met her gaze.
Whatever Jimmy said didn’t reach his ears. The world grew hot, he stared at her for a second. Pale blue eyes met his, she tilted her head to the side slightly—
And then he was waking up on the floor, with a sharp pain in his head and a matching one on his hand, and people rushing around him.
She leaned over him, his head was in her lap, and he blinked blurrily at her. Something was being held to the side of his head, and he flinched away. Blinking, he spoke, not really sure what he himself said but knowing from the looks of the people around him that it wasn’t English.
“I—what did he just say? Was that a name?”
“Elisábet? Does he have a sister?”
“No, that’s Ancient Greek. All of that was in Greek.” She said, glancing over at Jimmy. Turning, Scott accepted something from someone and held it to Joel’s mouth. Weakly, he batted at the cup, trying and failing to push himself up. Hands settling on his chest, she pushed him back down. “Whoa, you need to stay down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine.” He growled out, words still in Greek. He really didn’t care to speak English right then, honestly. Besides, it wasn’t like she—
Hands settling on her hips, Jimmy’s sister gave him an all-too-familiar scathing look. “You lay right back down, Mister. You’re not fine,” obediently, he laid back down. As he did, she almost…mocked him. Teasingly, with a shake of her head. “’I’m fine’. You’re as fine as I was while doing my taxes the first time.”
“When did you learn Greek?!” Jimmy burst out. Glancing at him, his sister winced. She shrugged. “You don’t know? Lizzie!”
Lizzie. So that was her name now. Made sense, he wasn’t Joel when he was back in Greece. But then, Joel remembered her.
And from the look of things, Lizzie didn’t remember him at all.
+++
A quick visit to the emergency room, thanks to someone already having called the paramedics, and then a couple stitches, cookies, and minutes on an oxygen mask later, Jimmy and Scott were helping Joel back into his dorm room.
He was still shaky, and limping a bit, and they were all well aware of it. In front of them, Lizzie carefully helped keep the path clear. After all, Jimmy and Scott—despite being two wildly different heights, including different heights from Joel himself—had slung one of his arms over each of their shoulders and decided to walk that way. Right now, he was too tired and in a bit of shock, so he didn’t feel like doing otherwise.
Lizzie had a NASA sweatshirt on under her cardigan. Have you seen the stars? Jimmy mentioned his sister was an astronomy major. Do you own a telescope? He had so many questions to ask, more than she would ever know. Because how could he possibly explain that she was the person he had known over two and a half thousand years before? How could he explain that he remembered when she did not?
More importantly—why would he do so?
There was no point. She may not like him that way anymore. She might be a completely different person. On top of that, he would have to explain what happened. How he got to power, how that power was what killed them in the end. What might that do to her? It wasn’t fair to her.
“Come on, let’s get you lying down. You might need it. Liz, think you can make him a hot chocolate or something else warm?” Jimmy asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“On it. Scott, does your Nursing Student self have any protests?” She asked it teasingly, and oh that made Joel’s chest ache. Settling on his and Fwhip’s couch, he tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. The star stickers he had put up there, a constellation that he and Lizzie had jokingly made before—well. They were still there. The stars were not. One of them had gone supernova sometime in the twelfth century, another two had simply disappeared from existence. They had been dead by the time that Joel and Lizzie had come back to walk on the Earth again.
If this really was what he thought.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he was just—
“Hey.” A hand touched his forearm. Flinching, Joel turned and looked at Jimmy. Taking a slow breath, Jimmy opened his mouth for a second and then started speaking, “So. This might be a bad time to question you, but I brought Lizzie to meet you for a reason. Do you think you’re capable of doing that, or do you want us to, like, settle down and watch a movie or something?”
“It depends on what you’re asking about. The hot chocolate might help?” Joel replied, shrugging. Behind him, Scott settled a blanket over his shoulders. Glancing back, Joel smiled at him. “Thanks, Scott.”
“No problem.” Scott headed off to help Lizzie with the hot chocolate, which was really just coming from the two of them messing with the Kuerigg on Fwhip’s desk. He never minded anyone using it, as long as they didn’t break it. Scott was a pretty careful guy, and if Lizzie was anything like how Jimmy described she was bound to be the same way, so he had no protests.
Watching them both for a moment, Joel turned back to Jimmy. “So. What did you want to talk about?”
Light brown eyes held his. Jimmy’s mouth drew into a thin line. Whatever he wanted to know, he was hesitant to ask. Then, finally, “Lizzie’s not studying Greek history like you are, she’s an Engineering major. So…we were hoping, since she’s been having some weird dreams lately, that you might be able to explain some of the stuff and maybe where she’s been seeing it from?”
Joel straightened up, holding onto the sides of the blanket and frowning at him. “What?”
“I know, I know—it’s a bad time. Just—” Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck. “You notice how Lizzie has, like, two really heavy layers on despite it being really early to do so? Like, it’s seventy-five degrees out—nowhere near sweater weather.”
“Scott wears sweaters, too.” Joel mused.
“Yeah, but Scott is, well, Scott.” Jimmy pointed out. Rubbing the back of his neck again, he added, “I’m allowed to say this. Lizzie has this weird—scar. She’s had it since she was born, no one knows why. Right here.” He traced a line over his chest, going from his collarbone right down over his heart. Flinching, Joel turned away and closed his eyes.
There’d been so much blood everywhere, but—it made sense.
Don’t hope. There’s no reason to hope. Why would you wish that on her? Joel gritted his teeth. “And? Maybe it’s just—I don’t know. Extra bone growth?”
“Well, we thought that. But it’s—you’d have to see it to understand. It’s super jagged. Looks like a knife wound. The weirder part is that the tissue there isn’t the color of the rest of her skin, it’s this, like, bright green sort of color. Sort of like—” Jimmy cut off, turning away as he rambled. “Forget I said that.”
“No, no, you—” Sighing, Joel stared at one of the old rings on the coffee table, where Fwhip had put down a cold soda without a coaster. As he shifted in his seat, he sighed.
Part of the reason his mom freaked out was because he had picked the same color as his own scar.
It was the same spot where he’d been stabbed as well, in the small of his back right over his spine. The skin was ropy, thick, raised. Bright green, or as green as it could considering it still had his old skin tone beneath it. It was probably the same way with Lizzie’s own scar.
Lizzie and Scott returned, Scott with a mug of hot chocolate and Lizzie with a bunch more cookies. “Thought you might enjoy these.” She said, setting the plate down. Smiling, Joel took a breath, thought about what he was going to say.
“So—your brother says you’ve been having dreams?”