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There are footsteps coming from down the hall.
Melinoë doesn't know how long she's been here. Days, months. Eons, maybe. When Time himself is the one keeping her here, what good does keeping track of it do her?
It was one mistake in a battle where even none is one too many. Her guard had dropped, defenses slipped, and her magick, for all that she'd spent honing it, still wasn't enough. If only, she thinks—as she has thought thousands of times before and will do so for a thousand more—she had done more. Trained harder, been a little faster. If she'd had the luck—though whether that would be good or bad, she cannot say—to have been caught with the rest of her family as a baby.
Instead of growing up to fail them all over again.
She hasn't seen her father in too long. Being chained to this room—his and not his—is the closest she's ever been to him. Headmistress, Nemesis, all of them. She wonders if they're coming for her, rallying up against Chronos's forces at this very moment. Maybe they've surrendered, the war lost the moment Melinoë was taken prisoner.
Or maybe, a voice in her head whispers, dark and familiar, they know exactly where she is, and they're choosing to leave her here to rot. It's what she deserves.
The footsteps grow louder. Closer.
Not Chronos. He appears in this chamber at will. No rhythm to his visits, except for when he wants to visit his 'favorite granddaughter', as he puts it. Checking, every so often, if she's broken yet.
Another one of his Satyrs, maybe. They come, every once in a while, to pierce and rip and tear at her flesh. And sometimes, they go a little too far, let a bit too much of her blood spill.
But if there is one thing that even the Fates themselves cannot deny, it's that Melinoë is bound to the Underworld. Cursed to be reborn in the golden pool before the Titan's stolen throne. She is led back to her prison, then, and made to kneel in the pool of her own blood, not yet dry.
How many times has her father bled here? How much pain, anguish, how much suffering did they put him through? Hers, she thinks, is nothing but a mere fraction of that. She will bear it—for him, for them all.
For her family, Melinoë grits her teeth and braces herself.
Louder, now. It didn't used to be so quiet here; Tartarus was always filled with sounds. Battle cries and machinery and the encouragement of whatever familiar had been following at Melinoë's heels that night. But now, nothing to listen to. Impossible to focus on anything else.
The chamber door slides open. An intruder—as though this is her room, she thinks, how comfortable she has grown here. They walk toward her, slowly. Footsteps light. As though they do not want to be found here. Though she keeps her eyes on the ground, she sees those feet out of the corner of her eye. She knows those feet. She’s seen them before. Felt the way they press down on her chest as the air leaves her lungs. The snap of her wrist under them.
“Prometheus,” Melinoë says. Her voice is rusted over from disuse. From screaming. When is the last time she heard herself speak?
The Titan steps forward until he stands before her. He says nothing, stands motionless, as though waiting for something. Her eyes remain on the ground.
“Here to gloat?” she asks, unable to stand the silence. “I suppose you picked the winning side in this war, didn’t you? Clinging onto your master's robes seems to have worked out for you, this time around.”
Still, he says nothing. As though waiting for her to look up at him. The old her, she thinks, would have refused to give him the satisfaction. Let him stand there, she would have thought. An echo: Suffer as I did.
This her, whose wounds have still not closed, who has scars matching his just as she has an arm matching his, is unable to do anything other than meet his eyes. There is something fierce in his gaze; it's as though they're on opposite sides of the battlefield once again, instead of as they are now. Her, kneeling at his feet. Chained to the point of immobility. Bleeding, dying.
"Is this what you saw?" Melinoë continues. Her voice is so weak. She does not recognize it. He must see nothing out of the ordinary in seeing her like this; so many times he's seen her bleeding, kneeling, dying. "Agent of Change, you called me. You were so sure that you knew the future, weren’t you?”
She lets out a laugh. Sharp, bitter. She hopes it hurts him, hurts like when she drives Lim and Oros into his throat, like Descura piercing through his chest. Her sisters in arms, do they miss her? Are they calling out to her now, and it’s her who is unable to hear?
Prometheus finally speaks. Quiet, as though he doesn’t want to be overheard. His words meant for no one other than her.
“I told you,” he says, “that you wouldn’t believe me.”
But he’s wrong. He was wrong and he is wrong and he will be wrong. How many times has she dreamed of this? Of losing, falling, dying? Failing? All of her training revolved around this, didn’t it? Because you only train to avoid failure if you think it’s a possibility.
“I would have,” she says. But perhaps that isn’t quite what he means. It’s not about whether or not she would believe him; it’s about the fact that there wouldn’t be anything she could do to change it.
And even now, she doesn’t. Fate is variable, isn’t it? If even Chronos can take the Fates captive—if Melinoë herself can breathe the air of the Surface, a place she was never even meant to go, let alone fight and live and thrive—then why not? Why can’t she get out of these bonds?
Melinoë sighs, lets herself fall as much as she can. The chains clink musically, an accompaniment to her suffering.
“Do you know why I’m here, Agent of Change?” Prometheus asks. Voice softer, now. Silky. So good to hear another speak to her, address her as though nothing has changed, that she could wrap herself up in it. Fall asleep. Wake up the next day, and maybe find that none of this was real after all.
She licks her cracked lips. His eyes follow the motion.
“Suffer as I did,” she repeats. “I haven’t, yet. It’s not enough, is it?”
No eagle with him, but he must not need it. A man who has had his own liver pulled out day after day, surely he has learned enough from that pain to be able to replicate it.
“You were shorn apart on a freezing cold mountain,” says Melinoë. He is so much taller than she; a fact that she has always known, but never let herself acknowledge until here, in this moment. “Torn to pieces every day, put back together every night. The gods witness to your suffering.”
He says nothing, no reaction to her leafing through the book of his life like this. Saving every bit of information about himself that he’s ever told her.
“Mine isn’t enough, is it,” she says. It’s not a question.
A fact of life, no matter how much she tries not to acknowledge it. Her suffering, her pain, not enough—nothing compared to everyone else’s. Her magick, her strength. Her. All not enough.
Prometheus kneels to meet her eyes. His hand, big, so much bigger than hers, reaches out. Grips her chin. Melinoë, still braced for pain, meets none. She is limp, allowing him to turn her head. Manipulate her this way and that; his eyes rove over her, as though cataloging her wounds. Seeing through each one of them to the pain that she felt. That his master put her through, she reminds herself, but it is so hard to do so when he touches her like nothing has changed. It has been so long since anyone has touched her for any reason other than breaking her apart.
He touches her like he’s putting her together again.
“Your relatives,” he says, “are creative.”
The first time he’s said those words without the undercurrent of anger that usually accompanies them. And her, too, the first time she listens without any guilt. Because this, she realizes, is the first time she’s faced him as just her. Her and only her. None of her relatives’ blessings, no Arms, no familiars. Not even the ever-present moon watching over her.
Now, she does not fight for her family, because she does not fight at all.
His fingers trace along her skin. Down the column of her throat, a touch that skims as much as it burns. Melinoë, who has been on the wrong side of his fire so many times before, only now realizes just how warm it can possibly be.
She's wondered, a dozen times before, why it is that the mortals did not worship him, despite all he gave to them. Sacrificed for them, suffered in their honor. If this is what his fire was to them—a light in the darkness, a respite from the cold, a reminder of everything good and bright and beautiful in the world. Bright as the moon, albeit in a different way. It's fitting, she thinks, that she's on her knees before him.
Her dress has nearly been torn to shreds; no Arachne, here, to weave her a new one. To cover her skin with the strongest of silken armors. Prometheus's touch traces over her bare skin. It takes her a moment to realize what he's doing, but when she does, she wonders how it took her so long to see it: he maps out the shape of his own scar on her. The jagged edges, the sweeping wound, scarred over a thousand times.
Do you still feel the pain? she wants to ask. Even when you got out of those chains, were you still as broken as you were in them?
"Not creative enough," Melinoë says instead. Her voice comes out softer than she means for it to. She cannot help but wonder what he thinks of her voice as. If he would wrap himself in it, had he the chance. "My liver is still inside me."
"For now." He considers her for a moment. Asks, "How long did it take for you to stop fighting?"
"Who says I've stopped?"
Even as she says the words, she knows they're ridiculous. The sight of her, she can't even imagine. Torn and ripped and bloody. She used to look so proud. Back straight, weapon in her hand, magick practically flowing out from her. Now, it has left her—would not return to her even if it were called.
"Your master," she says. "This is the Golden Age you both wished for, isn't it? Gods like me, all that you hate, punished for all eternity. How you must be rejoicing at seeing me like this."
But even as she says it, she knows there is something not quite right about that. She's seen him pleased with himself before: smirking, eyes glowing with his own sort of pride as he delivers to her the killing blow. She's seen him in pain, injured, angry. She has never seen him look like this before. So unreadable.
His thumb comes up to her lips. Strokes at her bottom lip softly. Comes away wet with blood.
"I told you before," Prometheus says. "Change does not come without conflict."
Conflict. What an odd word to use. It implies something different, Melinoë thinks. Something like rising and fighting and resisting. Not what she's doing now. Not letting things happen to her. Not weakness.
"Tell me what you saw, Prometheus," Melinoë says to him. "This time, I'll believe you."
He blinks at her. Hands close into fists, still stained with her blood, as though holding himself back. She's heard the stories before: that it was Great Heracles who released the Titan from his bonds. One who has escaped from his own chains, surely he knows how to free another. But she's quick to squash the small bit of hope that lights up within her, not unlike his flames—as she has been doing every time it reveals itself.
"Why tell you, Agent of Change," he says, and there it is again, that self-assured pull to the corners of his mouth, "when I can show you? Let you see what I saw."
And then, before she can say anything—before she can even breathe—that big, big hand of his is shooting out. Wrapping around her chains and squeezing, squeezing like he'd squeezed her wrist, her throat, breaking it like he'd once broken her. Putting her back together again. Returning her to herself.
"You... what are you... " Melinoë does not stand. Does not even move. So long chained up that she has forgotten how to be anything else.
How fortunate, then, that she has Prometheus. Who has learned how to stop being chained. Who is taking her in those same hands and pulling her to her feet. Freeing her. Him, the Agent of Change, now.
"I told you," he says, looking down at her. Not on her. Never, perhaps. "Conflict. Yours, mine, ours. What difference does it make?"
What, indeed.
"Go on, then," Prometheus tells her. Nods toward the chamber door opposite where he came from. The one that goes up. To the Crossroads. This is not your home, Melinoë, Headmistress has said to her time and time again. And she's right, perhaps. Not her home. But it is where she belongs. "Take up your weapons, goddess. Be ready this time. Don't let him catch you again."
She won't. She has no intention of doing so. But... what if she falters again? She, of all people, knows the potential of history to repeat itself. What if—
"If he would," she says slowly, "you'd see it, wouldn't you?"
He says nothing for a moment, before he nods.
"And if you told me about it," Melinoë continues, "would I believe you?"
"You tell me," says Prometheus.
She would, she thinks. No, she knows. She who has fallen knows that the possibility of doing so always exists again. But he has fallen, too. He fell, knowing he would. What did she gain out of this?
Knowledge.
I am not the enemy you see me as, he'd said to her before. She hadn't believed him, then. Now, she cannot imagine not doing so. He watches her as though he knows what she's thinking. Truly, as though he has cut her open. Seen her liver. Seen her at her lowest.
"If we meet again on the Surface," she says to him, "I won't hold back."
He doesn't smile, but it's a close thing. "You don't have to tell me, Agent of Change," he replies. "I've seen it enough. Felt it enough. It'll happen again."
This time, she believes him.