Work Text:
Ever since the day they'd met, they were as far apart in personality as the sun and moon.
Athena could still recall being eight, a little tall for her age, allegedly more mature than most children, with a tiny blond shadow often trailing behind her. Dylan was only four then, but he was incredibly energetic, like a mini tornado with long blond hair. He always liked when she braided it. It was why he wanted to keep it grown out in the first place.
They were like the sun and the moon, and the moon, as it does, tones down the sun's rays, or quells them.
In their case, when they were hardly tall enough to reach for the cookie jar, all Dylan needed was a tiny peck to the cheek, a head pat, a gentle word, any form of affection, really, and he shyly looked up at her, his eyes always wide with an affection that made her feel, strange, sometimes. It wasn't a crush, she knew that well enough. She never really felt for others, but Dylan? There was something odd in her veins that told her this was right every time bright blue eyes met steel gray.
Even as they grew older, her ability to soothe her sun never diminished. He still admired her greatly. He still trailed behind her like a lost puppy even when they were teenagers. She was eighteen, he was fourteen. And yet, almost nothing had changed. A small tap on the shoulder, a soft spoken word, or now, a small yank on his long braid was enough to get him to sheepishly snap to attention.
And every time it happened, that shy look on his soft features, the more it made her feel powerful, having so much control over her sun, the man she may as well have orbited.
By the time they had gotten married and had a child, Athena was 23 and Dylan was 19. It was fitting for such a man to rush through life as if aware of just how little time cared for him.
Time. One of the two things people are constantly at war against. Time, and nature. And yet, her husband, her wonderful, sweet, caring husband she was destined to ruin, did what he did best. He went with the flow of time and nature rather than fight against it.
She still swears up and down to some that she hadn't been hallucinating when she saw her husband get his hair braided by birds.
And time? Oh, time almost never caught up to the man she was intertwined with. And even when it did, all he did was grin and laugh it off.
The light never faded from her beautiful sun, even when streaks of white started mixing with the golden blond after their daughter and youngest child was born. He was in love. With life, with his family, his wife, everything he had to hold close.
And she was the one destined to bring all of it down. She could still feel the thrumming in her veins the day Coral passed. The day he collapsed into her arms, clinging to her as if she was the next thing that would slip from his fingers. The day he mourned their only daughter was the day she finally knew it for sure. Why does she love this man? Because she was the one to ruin him. It was written that way.
It was like the first high you get from drugs. The one time it's at its highest. She knew she'd never be able to feel that way again, and yet, she knew she needed to keep this momentum going. She was the one to bring such misery to her sun. And the eclipse it brought was something she needed to see again.
However, her duty to her first family came before everything else. And yet, she couldn't halt the satisfaction knowing she could do so and ruin her Dylan. As she was designed to.
Liquor loosened his tongue well enough, and a rush of satisfaction and adrenaline all at once that nearly felt better than that high flooded her, seeing that lovely, tragic mess of a man beneath her, those deep pools of blue she could almost tell herself she adored wide and glassy with overwhelming emotion, his chest heaving as if he couldn't help his breathlessness, his face flushed a beautiful shade of red. It was like that high, and yet it wasn't enough.
She needed more.
They were as intertwined as they could be, in mind and body, and yet, she needed more. More of him, more of his beautiful despair. More of the eclipse that came every time she dimmed the light her lovely husband gave off.
It was the day Basil visited that she knew she had to take action. Basil had come in, comforted Dylan, and then abruptly left, as if he'd seen something he'd known he shouldn't have. She knew they'd likely both seen the letters, but Basil was a much larger threat than her poor broken husband.
She remembered the day she heard Basil had almost taken Dylan away from her. The day the man she'd been woven to nearly ripped away by a man who had no right to the sun in her solar system. She'd wanted nothing more than to hack him into itty bitty pieces until there was nothing left.
The night Basil had tried to inform Washington just who she was was the opportunity she had to do so. And yet, she failed.
General Washington intervened, leaving her with several holes in her arms, a hatchet stained with her own blood as well as Basil's, and Basil, still alive. Still breathing.
She still had her husband. Her sweet, sweet ruined man, right by her side, like an obedient puppy. And she wouldn't let them take him. Not then, nor ever.
She still slept soundly at night, smiling to herself remembering how pleasant his screams were. That rush of satisfaction, hearing his desperation, his pleading, his misery. It was a feeling like no other, and now she finally had complete access to her eclipse.
She wouldn't be letting him go any time soon.
Because this is how it was written to be. How they were designed. She was his moon, he was her sun. And they never left the other's orbit. Not if she could help it.