Work Text:
Gods aren't kind, exactly, more so than others. They are petty and love to toss curses around, at times for the sake of doing so. Or so the songs went, and it was a point taken to not play games with the gods, and fear them a bit while you're at it (safe to say, he stayed far away from temples). His mother still forced him and Selenis to seek Artemis' approval before a hunt. Selenis didn't seem at all opposed to this, rather the opposite. He was not so sure.
But he always spoke his prayers, he wouldn't have liked to get stroke down by an angry goddess anyway, you can never know for sure with gods such as these.
Yet the forest held a predictable cycle to it that made it safer than any civilization he had previously traveled to. For holding the stories of reclused and standoffish deities in it, it was fairer than any human.
In his time for the army, he missed the forest he had been born and raised in. There was a calm to it he couldn't replicate with other forests.
"Nobody" never put much thought into the divine and the like at the end of the day, they were, well, gods, and he just a man sent to die. He could've prayed to one, asked for protection but he always felt like he couldn't depend on an empty prayer to save him. So he never did. The thought that a prayer could've saved him crossed his mind a few times while in the long walk.
His family would be the only to truly remember him after Troy. No god would choose to save a Nobody, known by no one, from nowhere out of all the wide category of brave and dedicated mortals. He had died like this, someone who's flesh would feed the ground, down to the bones to be made homes for the insects, until there was nothing left of him but except the faint memory of a boy who was taught to hunt since his hands were able to keep a grip on his bow, or of a reclused soldier. Then that would be lost too.
Atleast, until Artemis wanted Nobody, known by Noone, from Nowhere to fight for her.
—
He stared into the warping blaze, the soft crackle calling him to sleep. The long, jagged shadows cast on his face must make him seem more formidable than he felt. The ferryman had mercy on him, stopping at a river far from main land. Far from the others. He wasn't ready for the humiliation after his most recent defeat, not just yet.
A recently revived Nobody had hunted a rabbit for dinner, set down camp somewhere in a forest and roasted it over a campfire. His exhausted body begged him to sleep, but he forced his eyes to stay glued to the flames.
He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that, maybe an hour.
What matters, is that this nobody from the woods didn't hear the footsteps coming up behind him.
A hand gently tapped his shoulder, and he startled badly. His hand was on his blade faster than he could process the touch, rising to one knee and drawing it at where he assumed this stranger would be. The steel hissed and stopped just inches away from the intruder's belly.
"Stop trying to stab me!"
Niko's voice took on that high-pitch he had only heard once before, when one of the exploding beasts had gotten too close for his liking after his first death to one. So loud for so late into the night.
"Stop sneaking up on me."
The hunter exhaled a quiet huff through his nose, standing fully upright. He crossed his arms, squaring himself up, even though the champion of zeus sat comfortably quite a few inches above him.
"It's not my fault you're like a startled deer."
Despite Nobody's attitude, Nikos still laughed. His smile lines were deep on his face, lifting up the crow feet around his eyes, radiating infectious joy, making him seem like a man with an entire life ahead of him. In the brief time he has known the man, he probably thought so.
Nobody didn't rise to the teasing comment, instead sighing with great exasperation as his shoulders slacked. He sat back down on the grass.
He wasn't about to invite the man to sit by him, but he didn't have the energy to chase him away. Nikos took this as an invitation regardless, he seemed to take everything as one.
"Don't tell me a single loss has got you pouty?"
His jaw clenched. "Well then, tell me how you would react to being killed inside of Nyx's darkness by a woman who seemed all too happy to do so?"
Finally, for one blissful moment, Nikos was silent. "What are you doing so far away, anyway?"
"Enjoying my time alone." He answered, a half-truth.
"That is a boring man's pleasure." Nobody didn't need to look at him to tell the smirk forming on the other's face.
It made him roll his eyes. "Easy for you to say."
Nobody could hear the other shift on the grass, and he waited for another question that was hard to answer. And waited. And waited a bit more.
His gaze darted towards Nikos, nothing longer than a second. He was laying, eyes fixated on the night sky. A small tension slightly unfurled inside of himself, putting his weight on his hands as he leaned back to turn his sight to the stars, too.
"Tell me, do you like this little space the gods granted us?"
Nobody would have argued it was more than a little, but he bit his tongue, waiting a beat to answer. "It's beautiful. A little uncanny, but… mesmerizing."
"You're right in that." He might've just been hearing wrong, but Nikos was quieter than usual.
This made him realize something: Nikos hadn't laughed since he sat down. It was unsettling.
"What are you doing so far out in the woods?"
He could tell it stunned Nikos for a second, only one.
A bousterous laugh erupted from the other. "Wary, are you?"
"Curious, just curious." He was quick to clarify himself, too fast delivered to not be defensive.
"Very well, I was also just curious then."
"Are you going to explain further, or…?"
"No."
The hunter sighed quietly through his nose, gaze going back to the misplaced stars in the sky.
They stayed like that for a few minutes, the night breeze chilling them, his fingers subtly druming over the grass.
"What you said in the cave, do you truly mean to give up?"
Now it was Nikos' turn to stun Nobody, startling him out of the peaceful daze he was in. Before he could answer however, Nikos continued.
"Because you fought over your mistress' blessing like it was truly, rightfully yours."
Nobody scoffed loudly this time, mouth opening to get a word in.
"And you weren't going to let Nyx's champion take the win back in the coliseum, you had a pretty fair chance to take the upperhand too."
By now, Nobody knew where Nikos was leading with this, hiding his frown by looking in the opposite direction of the other.
"I don't think you want to spend 90 more years, walking on a beach. You don't want to lose."
His hands fidgeted with the hem of his chiton. His eyes stubbornly stayed on the trees around them.
"What does it matter? I'm just another champion in your path. I'm sure you also don't want to lose."
"That is true, but what's so wrong with spending the time together while we still can?"
"A lot of things."
"That's not true."
"Well, we all want that wish. What does it matter to spend time together when we'll just end up killing eachother?"
"It's concerning that you want me dead that badly."
"I meant- well- not you, in specific. Just- forget it," He sighed and hanged his head in the space between his legs. "forget everything."
"Will you atleast let me stay the night?"
He rubbed his neck, letting his eyes rest, closing them. "I have a feeling you'd stay either way, but still, do what you want."
The grass shifted under the weight of Nikos moving around, laying down at the opposite end of Nobody.
Nobody opened his eyes again, gaze moving to the campfire. He shifted into the same position he was in before Nikos invited himself. Minutes ticked by, and the champion of Artemis found his mind blisfully empty for the night for the first time in that night.
Eventually, his gaze extended past the fire to settle on Nikos' sleeping figure. He rested with his body facing down, face to the side while he used his arms as pillows. Without the grand gesturing and wide smile he almost felt like an entirely different person.
With this new state of mind, he decided to call it a night and temper down his fire.
Nobody laid on his back, the full force of his exhaustion hitting him all at once. His eyes dropped slowly, never leaving Nikos' frame.
—
That morning, Nobody woke to a still sleeping Nikos and a sky with stars still in it.
Nikos woke up to a shining sun and nobody by his side.