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He found her on a cliff overlooking the wreckage of Olympus. The golden sunlight glinted off the scattered pieces of heavy armor surrounding the girl, who looked all the smaller for it, diminished by both Apollo's rays and the bulk of metal. It all shone coldly in a modest sheen of steel, out of place among the fraying opulence of the mountain temple and its intricate marble and bronze.
“Nice armor.” Perseus spoke under his helmet, walking to stand beside the girl at the lip of the abyss, a sea of red sand lapping at the edge of his extended family's home, abandoned.
It seemed his presence didn't surprise her, or she took it in stride. “Not nearly as elegant as yours, but it's my own make.” It corroborated the meager movements of her hands on her lap, polishing the steel as if an afterthought. The background to her brooding.
“All the more impressive for it. My armor is an unusual case, I'd call it scales more than anything.” The tokens clung to him like pieces of a broken mirror, eyes that did not see the truth of the world until it was almost too late. “Not many come back here, even after the Gods went away.”
The girl huffed, seemingly in amused detachment. “That's the point.” Her pale eyes traced the corner of her sight, examining Perseus with more scrutiny one would expect of someone her age. “Which side did you fight for?”
Perseus tilted his head to look at her instead of the landscape, meeting her calm stare, knowing she would be looking upon her own face reflected in his armor. Yet she did not budge. “Once upon a time? The Gods. Lately? Mortals.”
“You're saying that as if you belong to neither group.” She twirled a wrench around her finger effortlessly, despite its size. “I wouldn't be surprised. I know someone else like that.”
“Who might that be, kid?” She seemed miffed by the title.
“My dad.” He wasn't given time to open his mouth before she elaborated, sounding put upon by the topic. “Midas.”
The Golden King. Perseus involuntarily clenched his fists, flooded by memories much the same way as the island had been overtaken by molten gold. Recent memory mingled with deep rooted history, a melting pot of mixed feelings. “I didn't know he still had a daughter.”
“Jules.” The girl put a name to her own face with defiant pride. Though she looked nothing like her father, her arrogance and confidence were second only to his. It was nostalgic, and therefore deeply irritating. “Engineering wunderkind and part-time decorative golden effigy.” Jules rotated her wrist dismissively with a huff. It was hard to tell if she was serious. “Well, not anymore.”
The so-called ‘Storied Hero’ simply hummed, looking at the engineer and wondering if she knew just how much her projected hardiness mirrored her father's veneer of a hard shell. As if the king hadn't cried rivers trying to wash the gold off his palms eons ago. As if a statue could never weep when none were looking.
“...You're from that time.” Jules finally stood up, dusting off her clothes and rubbing her forearm against her forehead, stained with oil and sweat. “You came along with all the other immortals. You knew him back then.”
Perseus wondered just how much he ever really knew, given how many times he'd been blindfolded and deceived in his past. “What of it?”
“What were you to him?” Even prepared to answer any question the child had about her father, Perseus wasn't ready to have himself as object of inquiry.
He turned to the horizon again. “Don't you want to know about your father?”
“If I did, he'd be more than glad to talk my ear off about his exploits. Yet, in all the lost time he tried to reclaim with me, I never heard about a man in silver armor. Feels like a big oversight, even if dad tries not to mention ancient times all that much.” It was the most she'd said in one breath this whole time, and it revealed to him that however much this woman looked young and irreverent, she was still the kin of a mastermind, and her intuition seemed as sharp as any blade borrowed from a king. “So?”
Perhaps it was unfair to assess her in relation to the gilded shadow she lived under, though. Jules seemed much more receptive to others, and the world at large. Smudged in dust and keen eyed.
What was Perseus? A legend, mostly. A lie, a monument to deeds undone. He saw himself as much more of a statue made by his own father than Jules ever could be. “Just a man...” She squinted at him, sharp and impatient. A familiar gaze in a stranger's eyes. “I could've been much more, but that time is long past.”
“And what's your name?” Jules’ eyes wandered from the face of his helmet to the facets of his armor, a gaze that clearly took apart and put together every piece in her mind’s eye.
He felt the inexplicable urge to have that scrutiny on himself instead of his armor, reaching up to take off his helmet. The breeze so high up was refreshing, though it made him shiver after losing the stifling comfort of his silver facade. “Perseus.”
Something about open air and full view made Jules seem younger, the surroundings framing her inquisitive head tilt as innocent despite the discarded rag stained in blood hooked on her belt, the bullet shells scattered among the daisies on the prairie, the scent of gunpowder fading from the barrel of her holster. “Medusa is alive.”
For the first time, Perseus smiled, a rueful thing that tugged on his heartstrings. He felt his eyes drawn to the fields of berries Medusa had lingered in for the past conflict, wondering if her footprints hadn't yet been covered in parasitic red sand. “Somewhere out there, yes. The myths of old aren't all they were cracked up to be. I was fortunate enough to have sense knocked into me before I could do something the world would regret.”
“You talk about her like she hung the stars in the sky.” The engineer pointed at the firmament, the fading sunset giving way to meek starlight that the girl traced in old constellations.
Perseus followed her motions with intrigue, familiar with the patterns of their original time. He wondered if she knew she was remembering a time long past, or if this was just muscle memory from time spent in stasis. “She surely didn't, but she was the one who took off my blinders and let me see the stars again.”
“She left you behind.” It was a blunt statement he couldn't escape from. Jules looked at him again, gently bumping their shoulders in alienating casual comfort. “Is there anyone left?”
The gorgon slayer looked directly up, tapping his fingers restlessly on the helmet held at his hip. “Some. They don't speak to me.” Artemis and Cerberus always seemed more preoccupied, and Styx if Perseus had any desire to reach out first after making a fool of himself.
“There's my father.” The wind seemed to quiet down to allow her voice the space to grow smaller, more delicate. “Were you not friends?” The word was ill fitting, both in relation to these men and in her vocabulary. It seemed Midas was still as unreachable as always, even to his own daughter.
“...We actually used to hate each other.” It seemed so simple when put to such common words. The new language made all legends into subtitles. “I can't remember our first disagreement, but they piled up like bodies on a battlefield. He never did like my face.” Perseus raised his helmet mirthfully, letting Jules unhook it from his fingers and start scrutinizing the apparel as he talked. “I always thought he was too self-serving. Turns out I was the one who gave too much to others. ‘Storied Hero’ and ‘Golden King’ have different roles to play.”
The golden child paused to glance at him before resuming to trace the lines between the shards of silver he'd come to know as his face. “In hindsight, he talks a lot about you. Just never mentions you by name or face.”
It came as much of a shock as the first drop of rain, right on his cheek as if in mockery of his exposed skin. “What does he say?”
The girl answered in bursts as she picked up the pieces of her discarded armor and piled them in Perseus’ arms. He didn't mind the weight, he'd been trained to carry others’ ambitions his whole life. “Sometimes he mentions a false hero, or just a man. Rarely he says you wasted your potential. At times he wrinkles his nose at silver things and makes them gold while muttering about a lack of taste. I'm guessing that's your influence.”
Following Jules was a simple task, though the rain picked up enough to get in his eyes, but he didn't feel as though it would be worth interrupting her to ask for his helmet back. “...Did he really talk about me?” The girl shrugged and, after a second’s pause, put his helmet on her head, looking around with it on. “...It suits you.”
“Everything suits me.” Jules’ voice was muffled, yet the bravado wasn't the least bit stifled. She truly did remind him of Midas.
As the wind picked up, Perseus hitched up the stack of armor pieces on his arms, leading them both down the gentle decline to the marble floors of Olympus. He could still hear the thundering footsteps of Zeus mingled with the gentle flapping of lovelorn wings, shedding feathers down to the tableau. Some plumes were shot straight out of the air by keen strikes from Artemis with the crooning of her brother atop the staircase, lazily strumming some instrument or another. In the distance, he could almost imagine Hades’ carriage making tracks in the invasive crimson sand, chased by wild bounds of his hound, play fighting with Aries in a manner too brutal for even Perseus to call a proper spar.
“You look like you've seen a ghost.” Jules quipped, his face reflected on the helmet he'd borrowed her, raindrops almost resembling tears on his detached face. He supposed the expression could be called haunted, if spectres came in the form of distant recollections. Once or twice he had been summoned to the Olymp proper, where otherwise his tasks were cast down like prophecies on pools of rainwater. The memories stuck out.
Perseus licked his lips of the water clinging to his face. “Immortals don't possess ghosts, more like snapshots. I just wonder what will happen now.”
The girl leaned against a pillar nearby, sheltered from the rain by structures much older than them both. “So? What'll you do?”
“I…” Directionless, the feeling of being lost finally sunk in under the cracks in his armor. There was no dynasty to protect or uproot, no friend nor foe to chase. “I don't know.”
The engineer nodded as if expecting that answer, though he supposed it wouldn't take an oracle to predict it. He was never good at schooling his expressions, accustomed to being covered. “Well, if you wander around long enough, you'll stumble into the Marigold docked somewhere. If you don't have anything better to do, I'm sure dad has busiwork to toss your way.”
“And why should I work to further his goals?” It was less of a resistance and more of a curiosity.
Jules removed the helmet from her head, though she did not return it, instead spinning it on her finger carelessly. As if she owned it. “Because you have none of your own.”
He could not find it in himself to argue further. Perhaps the time of fighting for gods and mortals was past, and it seemed all days invariably ended with a golden hour. If Perseus was greedy for wanting to be closer to the sun that cast those gilded shadows, he had nobody to give him reprimand anymore. At least he could keep fighting, as was his due, for whichever legacy remained of those born in the time of legends. “Perhaps you’ll see me again, Jules.”
The girl tapped the side of his helmet on her head. “Then I guess I’ll return this to you.” He could hear the wry smile in her voice, and wondered if his own had ever colored the reflective visor she bore now. Something about the way she carefully took it off made him inexplicably wish to see her wear it again. It almost reminded him of his own children. “It was nice to meet you, Perseus.”
“Likewise, Jules.” He resolved to see her again someday, and pretended it was the instinct to know if she would be okay, not his own desire to not be forgotten.