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Really, she should be one of the last people Hercules should want to see again any time soon. She’s pushy, intense, erratic – just the type of woman his father had always warned him about. True, what Zeus truly knew about females – whether they be deity, human or beast – could fit on the head of one of the pins that Althea uses to hold her designs together as she sews them together with her surprisingly deft, graceful movements, but Hercules still thinks that Zeus must know something after more than a thousand years of existence.
“Let her down gently, son. Women are as numerous as cattle and just as easily led!” Hercules can hear his father’s voice rattling in his head just at the thought; he doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry. Hercules hates Zeus – he hates him for his absence as much as for his presence. Long before, Zeus had turned back time when Hercules requested it, why not now?
Time heals all wounds, Hercules.
Bull. Iolaus has been gone for months now. He'd died right in Hercules' arms, looking him right in the eyes, Hercules' name the very last word he ever spoke...
Hercules had travelled halfway across the world and back again. He had taken a demi-god lover with a past darker and more twisted even than his own. He had helped Iolaus to the other side.
And yet, still he mourned. For what was. For what could have been. For what could never be.
"Grief is not a weakness, Hercules. It takes strength to mourn."
Hercules clamps his eyes shut. Mabon's words echo through his head, mocking him.
He felt like his grief was eating him alive from the inside. Iolaus was dead. Gone. Buried. And all for a woman they barely knew.
Hercules laughs to himself. Poor Iolaus. Always in love with someone. Always pining for someone. In love with love itself. Moping about for weeks when it all ends badly. But, still, getting up again – and falling for the next pretty creature that crossed his path.
“I think I’m in love with Nebula, Herc. She isn’t like all the others.”
Ah, but she is! Long gone, living her own life, away from the dangers so much as associating with the infamous double act of HerculesAndIolaus brings.
Admittedly, Nebula now rules Sumeria, facing down the risk of political assassination by some backward villager offended by her gender with steely determination. Yes, she had been so broken by Iolaus’ death she almost went insane when she thought she was being haunted by his ghost…
But Hercules isn’t feeling merciful right now – or particularly rational, lucid or coherent. He wants his friend back. Is that really too much to ask after all the good he has done in his life? All the good that Iolaus did in his life? Don’t they deserve a break? Surely the Fates can pick on someone else for a while?
“Hercules?”
Hercules puts his head in his hands. For a moment, he could have sworn he saw Iolaus’ face – distorted and altered by the strange colours and shadows the dingy lighting of the tavern creates – hovering on the outer edges of his vision.
His wife. His children. His mother. His best friend. All gone. Only he remained…
Is this what immortality feels like? Both hating and appreciating the burn of the ale as it slips down his throat. Isolation and anger and cheap ale in a tavern that violates even the low hygiene standards of the Trendopolis High Council?
“Hercules! Are you all right?”
Hercules jumps, startled, and immediately starts spluttering, choking on his ale.
“Sorry, Darling-Heart. I didn’t mean to startle you!” Her small hand is warm against his back. “You have the face of someone who dropped ten dinars and picked up one!"
Hercules smiles despite himself and the hot blush creeping up the back of his neck. “Twanky,” he drawls, not turning around. The ale has made him fuzzy, complacent. Maybe its stronger than he gave it credit for. Or maybe he just can’t hold his liquor. “I was wondering if you were still around.”
“Of course I am, you silly boy!” she trills. “I thought I’d come over. I wanted to stare at you up close instead from across the room.”
“Err…” Hercules says. “You stayed in town just to stare at me in a dingy bar?”
Twanky laughs with great mirth and Hercules finds himself joining in. “Oh, that’s just a bonus. That vile creature Count Von Verminhaven is to be tried for governmental incompetence and I am to be a witness at the hearing next month.”
She flicks her curls – silver again, Hercules notices, stark and bright against his eyes after the copper red of her hair at the fashion show – out of her eyes as she speaks. In the back of his mind, Hercules wonders if she always wears wigs or merely dyes her hair continuously. He really should ask her…
“But what to wear to a court appearance?!” Twanky continues. “I haven’t been a witness at a trial of this size since my seventh marriage ended in what the courts had the temerity to call 'suspicious circumstances'. Buying decent clothing for a voluptuous, womanly female like myself is harder than it was getting rid of the ‘parting gift’ my ninth husband bestowed upon me! I was drinking cranberry juice for two weeks after he left!”
Hercules swivels a little unsteadily on his stool, turning to face her in a vain attempt to catch on to all that she is telling him.
“And do you know how difficult it is to get cranberries in Athens in the middle of June? My boy, let me tell you, it was like trying to eat through a wooden stake! Hard, unpleasant to the palate and full of those little infection-inducing splinters that get stuck between your teeth an–”
“Err…” Hercules cuts in. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but-”
She looks him right in the eyes, hands clasped together. Then, she smiles slowly. “Ah, my dear – of course you understand! How silly of me not to realise!”
“Um, understand what?” Hercules asks slowly. The corners of the room are starting to spin – or maybe it’s just his own eyeballs, spinning wildly inside their sockets.
Twanky is still smiling at him in a way which is both unsettling and strangely comforting…almost familiar.
“Do I know you?” He remembers asking her the first time he ever saw her, back when everything made sense, when everything was as it should be…apart from her, dancing gracefully about the countryside in a rush of yellow scarves and red rose petals.
Now nothing in the world makes sense. Except her, with her strange accent and hauntingly familiar eyes that Hercules swears once belonged to someone else. Someone he loved.
Hercules thinks he needs another drink. “Barkeeper?” he slurs. “’Nother one, please.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
He doesn’t look at her – he can’t. “No,” he says dully. “The world doesn’t make sense. They’re all gone. But you’re here. And you make sense, when you really shouldn’t. So I need another drink.”
“I shouldn’t make sense?” she asks, sounding more pleased than offended.
“It adds to your mystique,” Hercules says dryly.
She chortles, a pleasing sound that Hercules suddenly wants to hear again.
“I feel like I know you, but I don’t,” Hercules mutters, more than a little horrified when he realises that he has spoken aloud.
“Of course you know me, my hunky Herc!” she coos at him. “I taught you to dance, remember? The most instinctive form of creative and physical expression brought to fruition through technique and the beat of life itself!”
She slaps her hand onto his chest, rubbing his skin gently with her fingertips. “Do you feel the beat, Hercules? You own heart pounding, the sound of the blood rushing in your ears? Whatever it is that is wrong, surely that knowledge that you are in yourself alive is comforting?” She smirks at him. “I know that I find that strong, steady beat comforting.”
Hercules looks down at her hand, still gently rubbing his chest, right over his heart. “In your own chest or mine?”
She puffs her lips out, smiling at him in a way that reminds Hercules of a large cat closing in on a very small mouse. “Oooh, you are a saucy boy!” she breathes. “All humans have a heart that beats. But some hearts are warmer and stronger than others…”
“Err…”
Her hand is still rubbing his chest, her long red nails standing in stark contrast to the pale yellow of his tunic.
There is a thud as Hercules’ ale mug is slapped down on the table. He looks at it blankly.
“Your order is here,” Twanky says dryly.
“Did I order that?” Hercules asks.
Twanky’s hand pulls away and her easy smile snaps into a look of determination so fierce he sinks down on his stool.
“Right then,” Twanky says, lifting her breasts – a strange little ritual Hercules has seen her perform many times, usually right before she is about to teach him a complicated dance move or ordering him to single-handedly build a stage for a fashion show in mere hours. “You’ve had quite enough of that alcoholic muck, young man! You need to go to your room, right now!”
Hercules blinks at her. She has her arms crossed under her breasts and looks really angry with him. She is usually so happy to see me…
“Where are you staying?”
“Err…I don’t remember…”
Twanky rolls her eyes.
“He’s in a room on the second floor,” the barkeeper says. “Top of the stairs to the right.”
Twanky smiles at the barkeeper who, to Hercules surprise, offers her a thin smile in return and looks pointedly at Hercules.
“Right then, my hunky Herc,” says Twanky. She lifts Hercules’ arm and wraps it around her shoulder, curling her other arm around his back. “Bedtime!”
***
Hercules isn’t quite sure how he’s arrived at this point, but sure enough, Twanky has somehow managed to guide him up the stairs and into his room. She’s a lot stronger than she looks.
He doesn’t realise he’s told her this until she laughs.
“Well, I try and keep myself fit with plenty of exercise,” she purrs. “Do you know what one of the best forms of exercise is?”
“Uh…dancing?” Hercules mumbles. He really likes Twanky, he does, but he wishes she’d stop asking him difficult questions.
“Aww, I like you, too, my dearest!” she coos.
Hercules can feel the blood draining from his face. He seems to have no filter between his alcohol-sodden brain and his mouth…
“And you’re half-right, at least,” Twanky is telling him as strokes his bicep. “Dancing is one of the best forms of exercise…although not always the type of dancing you should bust out on a public dancefloor.”
Hercules looks down to where her hand is resting against his skin. He’s not quite sure what to make of her enduring interest in his muscles.
“Can’t a girl appreciate beauty in the human form?” she asks, laughter in her voice. “And what muscles they are…”
Hercules looks up. She meets his gaze, smiling, sparkle and wit and a whole lot of challenge evident in her eyes.
“What type of dancing are you talking about?” he slurs.
Twanky’s face splits into a grin. “Oh, Hercules, it’s the most powerful, physical, instinctive dance of them all!”
Hercules looks at her.
Those eyes – those laughing, intelligent, familiar eyes – meet his own.
She reminds him so much of someone…someone important…someone he loves…someone he misses…
Something he can’t name rises in his chest, bursting forth with such force he feels for a moment as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
And, all of a sudden, there is only one thing he can do.
“Well, I don’t want to become unfit,” he says slowly. “Can you show me this…dance?”
The smile she gives him in return could light up the room.
***
Hercules sits up in bed, holding his aching head in his hands as he waits for the room to stop spinning. Hecannot deny that drinking that much was an incredibly poor choice. He is only a demi-god, after all.
“Feeling a bit under the weather, sweetness?”
Hercules frowns. He knows that voice…
It comes back to him in a rush, a swift and forceful torrent of images of golden skin and blonde curls and red lips and blue eyes…of moans and sighs and a soft voice whispering sweet things into his ear…of nails scraping his skin and long hair brushing his chest and bright bursts of pleasure…
He’d felt…happy. For the first time in such a long time.
Hercules looks up.
Twanky is lying next to him, smiling, draped in a sheet, looking relaxed, blasé.
But Hercules is hungover, not blind. Her body is tense and her eyes - those eyes - are wary. Is she worried he’ll yell, call her names, throw things at her, storm out?
He has no intention of doing anything of the sort.
“You sure are some dance teacher,” he whispers, grinning. "But I think I might need a few more lessons, just to be sure I have the hang of it."
Twanky's lips twitch upwards. "Oh, Herc, you're a natural. But I think I could show you a few more pointers."
Hercules pulls her towards him, smiling as she melts into him. "Oh, I'm all ears."