Bonus Content - Temporary

Hey everyone!

As voted for in the poll last month, here is Alekto's third entry in the RO POV series, set like the other in this last round while the PC is unconscious. I hope you enjoy it!

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Alekto finds that not stopping is about the best way she has of dealing with the situation.

Really, it feels ridiculous to even suggest that she of all people has a ‘situation’ to ‘deal with.’ She is, after all, relatively hale, already healed of her injuries, and presently attempting to make sure that everything in Tartarus is where and how it is meant to be—something of a difficult enterprise, when the place regularly changes its layout, if not its components.

Perhaps if anything is a situation to deal with, that is it. And yet, she honestly can’t help but feel as though she is using her work—her life’s work, the thing her life is meant to be about—to distract her from something larger and more important. It is an uncanny feeling, and she isn’t sure she likes it one bit.

Tomorrow she will have to begin a security review. Powerful as he still is in some sense, it is ridiculous that Kronos was ever able to gain access to Tartarus in the first place. Inwardly, she suspects that there will be no easy fix for the issue, not so long as the King of Titans is technically part of the Underworld, operating in that nebulous and rather coddled middle point for a war criminal, where he gets to rule over its most Olympian portion while enjoying all the benefits of his only good son’s work and a citizen’s access to his realm, all while not being subjected to real punishments because of his worst son.

Perhaps a person-specific ward would work; strange that it should be necessary. She’ll have to suggest it to Hekate, if the other woman hasn’t already thought of it.

All of this swimming in her head, and yet here she is, outside their door instead of doing any of it. It’s a weakness, well and truly, but Alekto tries not to think about that much. Nominally, she has an excuse—it’s her turn to be beside them. Dionysus. Hekate even told her to.

Realistically, she should refuse the duty. But Alekto hasn’t refused a duty since she was a very different person indeed. This, too, is an excuse, and the whole pile of them is for this exact moment, when she settles into the chair next to his bedside, and feels all the energy drain out of her. She tries not to even look at them too much, really, as it seems to her that this would be a very strange thing to do. What she does is tip her head back to the ceiling, let her posture slump, let her weapons rest on the floor, and close her eyes. Just for a moment.

This ritual sequence is accompanied by a sequence of emotions every bit as dependable. There’s the guilt, first of all, of course. Guilt that she couldn’t prevent this, couldn’t prevent what happened to Megaira and Tisiphone. Guilt that Pyri, too, was injured, someone who is practically, even if she does not acknowledge it aloud, her protegé. And yet… somehow it is that this happened to Dionysus that turns the guilt from a seed in her heard into something that blooms, poisonous and bittersweet.

Because if nothing else, her sisters chose this life, knowing the risks. Blameless in anything, they came with her to the Underworld to be by her side, and when she chose this job, they chose it with her, seeing that it needed to be done. Pyri, too, chose this, even if what they faces in Tartarus was bigger than anything Alekto ever wanted to set them against.

But Dionysus didn’t get to choose. He’s not a Fury, he’s not a guardian of the Underworld, he’s just a prisoner everyone wishes to set free but can’t.

Of course, he chose to go with her instead of someone else. That was a choice. But it’s not enough of one, and more to the point it isn’t one Alekto understands. Has he misconstrued her strength? Does he believe her more capable of protecting people than she actually is? She must assume so, given how this whole situation wound up. Perhaps she misconstrued her strength.

Cracking her eyes open, she settles her gaze on them. Just for a moment. They’ve been set to rights, of course; probably Hekate’s doing mostly, though Hermes would have helped, given how long the two have been friends. He looks as if he’s only asleep, which somehow heightens the feeling that she shouldn’t be here. His long red hair is braided neatly forward over one shoulder, the copper tone of it warm against the deep olive of his skin. He doesn’t even look all that wan, though she’d hardly call him flush with vitality right now, either, and he’s… usually that.

He looks so… human, in this moment, and that is a tender, brittle fragility Alekto is all too familiar with. Rarely does she pay particular mind to his heritage, as it simply isn’t something that concerns her, but… she wishes she could give him back that deific sense of health and strength, because it’s hard, to look at them and be reminded that they could die.

She shakes her head, tearing her eyes away again.

And to be reminded of other things. Of her own feelings, the fact that she cares much more than she realistically ought to, for a temporary resident of the Underworld. He has done nothing to make her believe he disdains the place, but where else would they want to be, when their love of the sun and their mother both is so obvious? In what world could this ever be anything but temporary?

She has experienced temporary before. It is the most terrifying thing in the world, and she is not strong enough to withstand it a second time. A difficult thought to have, when if not for him even her connection with Megaira would have proven that fragile.

But at least Megaira and Tisiphone chose her. Chose here. Dionysus, as much as they… seem to get along, would not.

And that is a reality she is simply going to have to live with.