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In one moment he is dead. Then he is alive. Then he is dead again. And he is nowhere. Of course, he knows better. He is in the nothingness and he's been here before, last time it was his choice to have a quick chat, to put it lightly. Now he turns and sees her mask and her form of nothingness. He doesn't quite smile wistfully.
"That's it then?" He says.
Her mask is not serene, it seems focused, it looks almost mad, her form is shifting so rapidly that if he hadn't noticed he almost would have thought she wasn't moving at all, "This is only a moment."
"I know." And he is confused, because he feels like he should be the one shaking with anger, and she should be serene.
"I prolong it as long as I can but it has to end," and her voice is grating, not the calm he had heard once before.
"What is it?" He asks concerned, if he could expect anything of her, it was not this.
"One is trying to end this moment now, one who defies me, one who takes the shadows I keep and seeps them in evil," she is mad.
"Orthax," he does not flinch but he feels like he did.
"The shadows, the dark, they are not evil. Death is not evil," she tells him, with more emotion then he ever expected out of the cool masked goddess.
He nods but she moves closer. She is standing very close to him in a protective stance even though there is nothing in this nothing that can hurt him, he's already dead. It's what comes after that will hurt. He realizes this with a sudden intensity.
"It's things like it," she says to him with such disdain, "that make the dark seem evil, they poison smoke with their deceit. Death is not evil it is death. It is they that covet an evil that is not there and want to make it their own, but it is mine," she says this to him but the words echo as if they are also addressed to someone else.
Percy is in stunned silence
The Queen seems to relax a little, if she could look weary, she did, "I feel that thing scratching against this moment, he wants to shorten it, but he cannot. I also cannot make it longer, only extend the eternity within this time. They did not let me have control over souls, only allowed me these moments. This moment."
"I thought the destination of souls did not concern you?" Percival speaks up finally, he is trying not to be afraid because he shouldn't be. He can't be.
"I do not control the destination of souls," she does not move, "I was mortal once," an eternity passes, "if you think that being a goddess means I cannot care then you are not as brilliant as I know you are. I can be mad, I can feel protectiveness, I can be afraid. Just like you."
He jolts, "I am."
"I understand but this moment will end," she says.
Percy looks off past her into the nothing but he think he sees what's ahead, "I am afraid."
The anger creeps back into her voice, "I can't make the time spent with him any shorter by lengthening this time it will always be the same."
In that moment, that is the same as the one he's been in since the bullet ripped him away from his friends, he sees a woman. Surrounded by friends, a determination, a fear of the shadows within her, her eyes dart around looking for a solution, a quick fix, anything, she's trying to be clever, a battle, a raven.
He sees the mask in front of him and sees someone who has lived for eternities within eternities, but once looked from one moment to the next.
She looks at him and also sees that woman.
The moment ends. She is alone in the nothing and feels the sorrows of her champion. Not all the sorrows she feels are his alone.