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Alabaster stares. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me.” Ethan turns over in his bunk to face the wall, away from Alabaster. “If you really plan to defect, leave me behind.”
“What—Ethan—Why?!”
“I’m in this for better or for worse, Bas. There’s no world where I take the easy way out.”
“The easy way—” Alabaster swallows hard as heat rises to his face. He’ll be damned if he cries in front of Ethan, even if the tears are of anger. “Ethan, if this goes on, nine-tenths of our army will be decimated by the time we win.”
“People die in war. That’s just how it is.”
“I lost three of my siblings today!”
“Not in vain. We rescued the Clazmonian Sow from the Hunt.”
“Is that all they were worth? A flying pig?” Alabaster’s voice cracks. “Makes me wonder what you’d trade me in for.“
A sigh. Ethan sits up.
“Come here.” Ethan draws him in. A sob rips out of Alabaster’s chest as he buries his face into his lieutenant’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
A few seconds is all Alabaster lets himself indulge in before he pulls away, furiously rubbing at his eyes. "if you're really sorry, then come with us," he says heavily. "I'll lose my mind if I see any more of my siblings die. Or you."
"I can't." A strong hand tucks errant strands of hair behind his ear, rueful and affectionate. "Three of your siblings might've died today, General, but do you know how many other demigods have died since I joined the Army?"
Alabaster sniffles. Maybe thirty-two, thirty-three. He'd lost exact count at twenty. Keeping demigods alive as the Army moved around the North American continent without the magical protections Camp Half-Blood offered had been incredibly difficult; not all newcomers adapted well, especially the younger ones.
He's so tired.
"We have a cause, and we have a responsibility to the corpses we stand on," continues Ethan. His hand slips down Alabaster's face, stroking the line of his jaw before nudging the younger boy to look at him. "I can't let their deaths be in vain, even if you're willing to turn tail because you weren’t prepared for some of them to hit so close to home.”
Alabaster shoves Ethan’s hand away, a fresh wave of tears welling up in his eyes. “Fuck you,” he heaves.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“It’s not—” Hiccups wrack his chest. “How can still you care about being right or wrong in this situation?”
"I'm not saying that I relish their deaths. There's a reason why I remember the number, and every single one of their names and faces." A trembling smile spreads on Ethan's lips. "But it's nothing that I don't expect of myself, too."
The rage swelling in his chest shatters at those words. “Don’t say that,” heaves Alabaster. “I’ll really go crazy if I lose you.”
This time, when Ethan cups his face, Alabaster lets him.
“Then protect me well,” whispers Ethan, “and lead us to victory.”
With the tidal wave of grief and the combined six hours of sleep he'd managed over the past three days, every remaining neuron in Alabaster's brain is struggling to keep firing. Too many emotions and arguments and apologies are fighting its way out of his body.
It’s so indescribably easy to let the weight drag him down into Ethan’s embrace.
"I hate you," Alabaster mumbles. “Do you have to be so pragmatic all the time?”
"You like that I give zero fucks about openly disagreeing with you. It’s why we get on." Soft snickers escape them both, before Ethan's tone turns somber again. "Changed your mind?"
Their foreheads touching and fatigued breaths mingling, Alabaster traces the eyepatch strap along Ethan's temple. Ethan lets him, even if he usually flinched away from anyone trying to do the same.
The quiet permission lodges itself under Alabaster’s tongue, making him ache to dare ask Ethan for more. To push the envelope, to see just how much of himself he could give to Ethan.
Ethan wouldn’t take him. He’d be constantly looking over Alabaster’s shoulder to keep his gaze on the war, and when things came to it, he’d leave and march to his death.
All Alabaster could do as of now was to march with Ethan in the hopes that they’d make it out to the other side alive.
"A good general doesn't leave his men behind, I guess," Alabaster answers after a while, holding his mother's words to his aching heart as a balm of hope.
We will be victorious, Alabaster. I'm sure of it.
"Child," his mother warns, Greek fire-green eyes flaring in alarm as Alabaster's discordant laughs echo around them.
"Mother," he cries hysterically. "Even if I leave him here, I can't let his death be in vain."
"All this over Nemesis’ boy? Think about the siblings you have left under your care. Don’t be rash."
Alabaster grips his sword. Its hilt is now bound to his hand by a frayed eyepatch, the only item that had made the heap of Ethan’s viscera identifiable.
"You know who he was to me. And Ethan would've wanted me to fight no matter what.” Alabaster smiles, tears in his eyes. “We regroup."