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“This is for the best.”
It is what Prometheus tells her the minute she flinches in response to his tone. Such vitriol. He had hardened his gaze and curled his flame-covered hands into fists, turning himself into a stranger she could not recognize. He did not react when her eyes widened in betrayal, did not falter when her lips fell open and her eyes, so bright in Olympus’ fire-light, welled up in tears.
He hates to speak to her this way, hates to leave her like this, but Prometheus knows that it is for the best.
She will understand this in time, too, the titan thinks, as he waits in his roost on Olympus, cooling embers sizzling in the fire pit he refuses to tend to. Once Melinoë is no longer caught up in the way her mortal heart aches, once she is no longer consumed by a sadness that morphs into a prickly type of grief… She has never been good at hiding her emotions, a fact that has been clear to him from the very beginning. He can see her falter every time she ascends to the penultimate chamber.
She would do her best to school her expression, a perfect mask of impassivity, only to have it crumble the moment he came into view. Her face would fall and her breathing would stutter, her weapon of choice trembling in her grasp as she approached him with dizzy steps. Eventually, she stopped coming altogether. Was it embarrassment? Anger? Acceptance? He thought her done with the Surface for good until she showed her face again one night.
Prometheus did not like the way she looked at him when she arrived. He did not like that she refused to address him with her words. He did not like the way the consequences of his actions made him feel. He did not like the uncertainty that coiled in his chest when she ignored his taunts, his attempts to rile her up.
Prometheus did not like that he cared so much about a present he played a part in bringing about, and yet he refused to address this because he knows it is for the best.
Even if she is angry, even if she hates him for the rest of their long, long existence, Melinoë will soon understand. Their relationship was never meant to last. A simple rebellion that overstayed its welcome. Nevermind her attempts to salvage what had been broken off and burned already, she was never meant to balance the weight of her task and the trivial nature of their relationship.
And so he had cut her off. Prometheus decided that this was for her own good.
It means nothing if she does not appreciate his interference. It means nothing if she lumps him in with all the others who have forced their hand into controlling her life. She will see the good in his actions when the time is right and that is all that matters.
Prometheus swallows thickly, standing taller when the arena door lifts, watching as the Princess of the Dead announces her presence with an icy wind and a fiery bloodlust that would likely kill a weaker being.
“Titan,” she spits, and it is so, so cruel. He knows he deserves it.
He does not return her antagonism, shifting his feet instead. She notices the change and mirrors her stance, Descura held aloft as the arena’s heat washes over them both. When he bids her to come for him, she does without hesitation, hackles raised, teeth bared—
The present means nothing to those like him, not when one’s mind is clouded by infinite possibilities at any given moment. It means nothing if the only future in which his Agent of Change succeeds is the only one in which he cannot have her.