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He’s never seen her in the sunlight before.
Moonlight guide you, she says — and for her, that’s always been true. He sees the way she dances through his city of Ephyra, soft footsteps barely leaving a mark in the bloodstained dirt. She turns her head this way and that, wheat-colored hair obscuring her face, before setting her sights on one chamber in particular. He's never asked how she chooses one.
Tricksy, these witches. It's easier for him; all he has to do is let his club lead. No stops along the way. Just him and the labor before him, that's all.
They call him an animal — but it's her, he thinks, who is more creature than human. Perhaps there isn't much difference between a goddess and an animal. Gods know Her Majesty the Queen can be rather rabid herself, though the last thing he needs is to admit that out loud and give her yet another reason to strike him down where he stands.
The witch tilts her head at nothing, like it's the sound of the wind she listens to. She crouches, brushing the tips of her fingers over the buds that grow from the stones of the city. But more than anything, it's the way she looks in the moonlight that convinces him.
Her skin shimmers; fingers tighten around the hilt of her axe, as though she gains strength from the moon. A Mare of Diomedes come back to haunt him, flesh of her keeper between her teeth. He'd nearly laughed the first time he'd seen her with that axe, dragging around a weapon larger than herself.
He doesn't laugh anymore.
He might be the one to think it, but as is usual for them, she's the one who brings it up. More of her witch tricks: plucking the thoughts from his head, fully formed like his own sister once was.
"What does the city look like," she asks, "in the daytime?"
Swiping a hand across his forehead, he considers her. Information, in this world of gods and mortals — and whatever in hell he himself is — is currency. Trickling out like drops of pure Nectar, both of which he never goes without these days, thanks to her. Never mind the fact that he's never asked for either. Never mind the fact that he's never once refused her.
He wonders what she'll do with his answer. Pluck it from his throat. Throw it into a cauldron, boil it up with gods know what.
"The same," he says, a not-answer. "Brighter."
The witch laughs, surprisingly enough. As though he's said something funny. As though he were the type of man to do something like that — tell jokes, just for the sake of it. Because he can. Because maybe, he'd like nothing more than to hear his companion laugh.
"The way things usually look in the sun, I suppose," he continues.
Her smile fades. He's said the wrong thing, then.
"I wouldn't know," she says after a moment. "I've never seen the sun."
It's as though she's taken up his club and bludgeoned him across the face. What a life she must have lived — no life at all, indeed. He had his labors, yes, but through it all, he had the sun. Knowing that it would be there to warm him, day after day. That no matter what he'd lost, he still had its light.
No love for the gods, but the Titans — or one, in particular — he admires. The witch often calls out for her Sister Selene. If he had had the words to do so, he would have spent his entire life calling out to his Brother Helios.
"You can breathe up here now, can't you?" he asks gruffly. "Your... " He gestures at his nose, his mouth. Do goddesses breathe? Does he breathe anymore, or is it just the pure carnage and destruction he leaves in his wake keeping him standing upright?
"Yes," she says, taking pity on him. What a concept that is. "But it doesn't matter. I've... I've never survived past the night."
That's all? he wants to ask. That's all that keeps her from understanding the world? Seeing the one thing worth living for? All may fight through the night — but when daybreak comes, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. And she will, too.
"Then stick with me, sister," he says, taking up his club, "and we'll change that together."
Time passes strangely in Ephyra, a consequence of their enemy that hides below the surface. But there are some things that are inevitable. This, too, is one: he and the witch have always crossed paths over and over, a pair of fishing lines tangled together. Tonight, they fight side by side for minutes, maybe. Hours. A fish finally on the hook.
He doesn’t know if they both breathe, but neither do their enemies when they’re done with them. The witch wields her axe surprisingly well; some strength-enhancing spell, most likely. She uses it as though it’s a simple blade, swinging it around and around and around while he watches out of the corner of his eye. There is no grace in his own movement. In the past, he would have said it wasn’t necessary, that it was possible to get the job done without it. Looking at her, though, he isn’t quite sure anymore.
But this, he thinks, is a comfortable state of being: not knowing things. He isn’t meant for that, for thinking and knowing and understanding. A club does not think. A knife does not understand. They do what they’re made for, that’s all, and so too does he.
She lingers with him afterward in the empty chamber. No rushing ahead for her, not tonight. This isn’t new for him — he has nowhere to go. Clear the city of wretches, feel the sun on his face, repeat, repeat, repeat.
“How long?” she asks.
“Wait,” he tells her. “You’ll feel it before you see it.”
And they do.
The light of the sun never fails to make him feel like a knife through his heart — but in the best way possible. An escape. As though his labors are finally, finally finished and there’s nothing more for him to do. Nothing more being asked of him.
At his side, the witch inhales sharply. Reaches up to cover her eyes. Her hands are so small.
“It’s… so bright.”
“Isn’t it?”
“How do you stand it?”
He huffs out a laugh. “The same way you stand anything, sister. You get used to the way it kills you.”
The sun rises slowly over his city, and she steps closer to him in response. “Will it hurt?”
The same way you’ve been hurt before, he wants to say. The way it feels when you love someone who is ripped away from you. The way it feels to die over and over and over — and, for a moment when you are reborn, you forget about your task. You forget everything. All you know is the brief moment that you are alive.
“I told you before,” he says instead. “Stick with me, and no harm will come to you.”
“Then I take you at your word, Son of Zeus.”
Helios’s chariot rides swiftly across the sky, brighter than he’s ever seen before. Perhaps the Titan, too, is part of their war — theirs and not theirs.
The sun, he has seen a thousand times before. It is rare, though, that he sees another’s reaction to it. He turns his head to his companion.
Her mouth is open, mismatched eyes wide. Too bright, she’d said, but it seems those from below can appreciate the above world as well.
She shines like in the moonlight, but different. Gold instead of silver. Surrounded by the sprouts she’s coaxed from the earth, he’s reminded, suddenly, of the Garden of the Hesperides. The dragon Ladon — his role, maybe. And hers: the fruit of the single tree, growing in the center. Worth holding up the entire sky for.
Too bright, he thinks, and yet does not look away.