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kittydesadeTitle: One Shift, Two Shift, Red Shift, Blue Shift
Fandom: Angel: The Series
Characters: Illyria, Glaucon (OC), Gunn, Wesley, Angel, Connor
Word Count: ~13,000 words
Rating: PG-13 (It's a surprisingly tame apocalypse)
Summary: At the end of all things (again), Glaucon reflects on how this end of the world reflects the end of his world when he was a soldier of the Goddess Illyria of Primordium.
Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4
"I told you!"
A muscle in Glaucon's jaw twitched. That human was irritatingly loud. Illyria stared back at him with the sort of expression she reserved for idiots right before she did something reprimanding and often violent.
"I told you this would wind up being one of those big battles, with the damn dragon and all that bullshit. I told you that wouldn't work!"
"Sit down," the half-breed said, quietly but in a tone that matched his Goddess's expression.
"And what do you plan to do about..."
"Sit! Down!"
Glaucon winced. So did at least two others in the room.
The half-breed rose, paced a slow circle around the chair where he had been sitting, bridge of his nose pinched between thumb and forefinger. No one spoke. The Goddess folded her arms and waited for them to decide what they were going to do, and Glaucon stood behind her with his hands clasped behind his back, one hand around the other wrist, as he had been for the last fifteen minutes. Everyone else darted their glances from one to the other, waiting and unsettled.
After long enough that everyone but the two from Primordium were becoming fidgety, the half-breed rested his hands on the back of the chair and leaned on it, looking over at the Goddess. "Isn't there something else we can do?"
"There is nothing. To stand aside would be seen as weakness, and you would be slaughtered. Any attempt to negotiate would be met with demands you would not be willing to fulfill..." and after years enough of dealing with the half-breed and his people, she would know that. "... and you would be slaughtered. If you are able to come up with a way to infiltrate his domain and surgically remove him and his immediate staff I would be willing to entertain a suggestion." But that was said in the dry tone she used when she thought everyone was being very foolish and would not be able to come up with something appropriate to suggest, anyway.
Glaucon closed his eyes a moment, only his eyes, and thought back to when there had been a strategy table that displayed the layout of the territory in which they would fight, with small figurines to represent the fielded troop. How they had argued in quiet and calm tones back and forth over that table, long into the night and the following morning, who would shift where and what that would do to their front lines, their supply lines.
He opened his eyes. No one had any suggestions. Open battle it was to be, not so much the specialty of any here. Except them, perhaps.
They were, he had to admit, rapidly becoming more skilled at planning out or at least anticipating the flow of single-battle skirmishes, though.
"The conjunction is on his side, not ours." That was from the quiet human, who had been studying, learning. "He was born at the right time, and in the right place, and he learned that and is taking advantage of this. Like..."
"You mean like Superman."
Glaucon had no idea what the human was talking about, but the others seemed to. The scholar heaved an impatient sigh. "Yes. Like Superman. We may not be looking at an apocalypse, but we are looking at a dictator and a despot who is not ignorant of the advantages he is about to have, nor does he miss an opportunity. We should consider that Illyria is right..."
High Priest or not, she gave him a very ugly look.
"... and that battle may be the only option."
No one liked the sound of that. There was shifting, fidgeting, the pallid half-breed muttered something in his strange lyrical voice and left to prepare his people. The green-skinned empath was the next to leave, muttering something about certain death and going out with a bang and not a whimper, to which several of the others snickered.
Illyria's hand brushed down his arm, and she nodded over to the pile of texts the scholar had assembled. "If there is anything further to be found in those books, you will be the one to find it." It was both an order and a quiet word of praise, which further underscored the gravity of the situation. She was sparing of her praise, even for him.
Glaucon nodded, "As my Goddess wishes," and went to the books. The scholar moved aside for him; he must have been forewarned that Glaucon would be reading over his work.
The human, or at least, human-like creature, gave him a strange look as he took up the seat in front of the ancient texts. Glaucon thought it was contemplative, but it had been some time since he'd been around humans and his skill at reading their expressions was somewhat diminished.
He wondered, a little, what that was for. He would have to ask his Goddess later what she and the human spoke about, regarding himself, when he had a moment where it was appropriate.
For once, the human was not shouting.
The half-breed and the loud human were talking in low tones, quiet but enunciated and smooth. Their heads were bent low together and though neither of them looked up, Glaucon could see their shoulders and back tensing every time there was the sound of movement around them.
"He's been here for ten months, Gunn, and you haven't said a word."
"That's ten months he wasn't doing anything but laying there. Ten months he was sitting peaceful in her temple and it didn't matter. Now he's out here in the world with the rest of us? It matters."
They were talking about him. His ears perked up while his head stayed bent over his work.
"Why does it matter? No, don't answer that." Good, because it was a stupid question, even Glaucon thought so. "Why didn't you say something sooner? You had to know that he was going to get out of the temple eventually. He's been out and walking around for six months, you had to know that eventually he would be coming here and working with us. Where else is he going to go?"
Glaucon didn't have an answer for that. Neither, apparently, did the loud human.
"I was hoping she'd get rid of him once he'd..."
"Yeah, you know better than that."
"I know."
Get rid of him. Glaucon's fingers curled together, talon tips digging into his hand. As though his Goddess would get rid of him like a piece of trash from the streets. Of course not. He knew that. They did as well.
"He's her last follower," the half-breed was saying. "He's... the last person she knows from the time and place she came from. They're going to stick together, and you just, you might as well get used to that."
Squeaky shoes moved slightly farther away, closer again on the linoleum floor, then crossed to carpet. That was the human, he thought. Pacing. He wanted to pace, a bit, but still didn't look up. Their decisions would not affect his fate. Only his Goddess could do that. No matter what they said.
"I don't trust him."
"I know you don't trust him. I don't trust him either."
No, and that at least he could sympathize with. They were right not to trust him. They barely knew him, and even if his allegiance was sworn to his Goddess and her allegiance had been established to them, that did not mean that he had given them any reason to trust him. If he were them he wouldn't have trusted him either.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I? I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to keep an eye on him, and if he does anything at all shifty, I'm going to shoot him. See if that helps."
The human snorted. "Sounds like a plan to me."
And that was the end of that conversation.
He turned his attention back to the document he was translating, only just catching the footsteps as one set led back onto the carpet and up the stairs, the other out into the lobby. Neither of them came near his little alcove, what used to be some place for a clerk to sit by the look of things and now his private little workstation. Out of sight of the others.
They did not want to see him. They did not want to imagine that he was there. He was a stranger to them, and worse, he was a thing. A creature, a demon.
This should not bother him as much as it did.
Evening fell. Everyone went to eat, then to a social hour, then to their rooms to sleep. Glaucon remained awake, sitting at the desk, studying and translating.
"You should rest."
It had been a long time since she had used that tone on him. Since she had touched him. At least, here it had. When they were in this place, the home of the others, they were the Goddess and the Soldier. When they were in the temple they could be who they wanted to be to each other with little risk of being seen and subjected to idiotic questions.
He supposed it was because everyone was asleep. Or feigning sleep in the hopes of not disturbing anyone else. Of all the behaviors he had seen in the people of this world, that was one he could understand.
"I will rest when I am done." But he covered her hand with his. His hand was so much bigger than hers, now, and it would always be so in the future. This still felt strange to him, and yet it also pleased him that she had a form so compatible with his. A form that he could touch and hold. When she was all he had left he found he wanted to touch and hold her a great deal more.
It was worse when they were here, among those who were supposed to be their allies, and he was the outcast.
Her fingers carded through his hair, careful not to break the feather-like strands. "You are troubled." It was not a question.
Glaucon nodded when her hand had moved to the back of his shoulder. "We may yet die tomorrow. You have died once before; I was near to death twice. I do not want to die."
He stated it plainly, without emotion, but looking up at her with earnest eyes. She was so old, he felt much like a child around her sometimes. Like now, when she smiled down at him with tolerant amusement and his chest twisted. She so rarely smiled.
"I do not believe that any of us wishes to die. We simply wish the alternative to battle to occur considerably less. You do not wish to be a slave to..." His expression confirmed it before she had finished the sentence. "Nor does anyone here."
"What concerns me is not that any of us wish to die but that they may not be so concerned with whether or not I survive the coming battles." He remembered the importance of being able to trust and depend on your fellow in battle, remembered how that lesson was rammed into him time and time again by his commanders. He remembered seeing it in action. "They do not trust me. I do not look like them, I do not speak like them. They..." he snorted. "They do not look like each other, but they share history. They share at least one language, and all the knowledge of how this world is. I do not. I am alien to them in every part."
Her fingers soothed through his hair again. "They were all unknown to each other, once. I was unknown to them. They are, for all their faults, very adaptable. As are you," and that, too, was praise, and a demand to live up to her expectations. "You will find your place among them, and you will not die tomorrow."
And that was her final word on the matter, and so the subject was closed. She stayed with him for some time after, combing her fingers through his hair, and he stayed to read. As the sky began to lighten again she stepped away he caught her hands in his, clasped them together, cupping his hands around hers.
"My Goddess," he said, in their old language, and it meant more than that. She was all that he had in the world.
She stepped forward and kissed his forehead, to where she came up even with her standing and him seated. "You will not die tomorrow," she repeated, firmly. "Now go and prepare."
"Yes, my Goddess."
She smiled.
The city was in ruins. Structures broken on top of structures piled on top of rubble, everything collapsed and the debris spread across the roads. Fires had warped the buildings so much that they could no longer support themselves.
There were no longer bodies in the streets. They had erased the immediate toll of the insurrection from view, but there were also no more market stalls, no wandering folk who lived in the city, no one in the streets without a most likely sinister purpose. Soldiers, for the most part. Workers trying to keep what buildings were still standing upright for the time being. Servitors of their new lords examining what they had won. Other than that, everyone was staying in what shelters they had found and waiting to see how the dust settled.
Glaucon stared out the window at the city and tried to make his mind function despite the constant shrieking of his inner thoughts that said this was wrong, wrong. This could not be the way things were.
She was dead. Except she couldn't be dead because she was immortal. His Goddess was gone, except she couldn't be gone because she was the Goddess. There was nothing left for him here except there had to be something because this was where his life was. This was everything. This was.
Empty and broken. This was broken.
His fingers curled into the edge of the windowsill, palms caked in dust and sweat. He bowed his head as his shoulders tensed and locked, the muscles of his neck knotting uncomfortably. Below, his friend Llan was likely mobilizing soldiers to try and hold the palace, if it could be held, or discussing what was to be done with their Captain if that was not the decision made. He should go down and join them. He should do something. His mind refused to realize where he should be except curled up in a ball in the corner or standing in the window stretched to the fullest extent of the frame, screaming.
Screaming out of the window would be useless, and bring nothing but trouble. There was already a great deal of screaming going on and betraying a weakness would only get him killed as well.
"You are not joining us?"
He didn't turn around. "I thought you would be in conference already."
His friend's fur ruffled; he had made that noise he always did when his fur ruffled from head to toe. Only louder. They were both equally unsettled by what had happened. "We ... were waiting for the last few to arrive."
It wasn't hard to interpret that for what it was; that he had waited and finally likely had told them to begin when he returned so he could go and fetch their over-tall and feather-headed member from his rooms above. She had granted him rooms above when he had expressed, however reluctant he had been to ask for them, a wish to be closer to the sky. Something about the vulture demon he had consumed; ever since then he had preferred to be higher up and close to the open sky.
He did not want to remember that right now. He didn't want to remember any part of that right now.
"Glaucon." His friend did not step closer to him, did not come into the inner room. Glaucon realized with a fresh swell of pain that his friend was afraid of what he might do. "Your men need you. You have an obligation."
No, he wanted to say. My obligations died with her.
But she would not have approved of that.
He nodded. "I'll be there in half a breath." His nails dug into the wall of the building, but he waited several moments after his friend had left for his composure to come back before he turned and followed the other demon down to the meeting.
Nothing was right, anymore. Nothing was safe.
"You're not wrong..."
The human-looking child, though Glaucon was told to understand that he was no longer a child, was strong for his species. Progeny of two half-breeds, he looked entirely human but was not. His speed was greater, his strength, his reflexes. He was a human-looking creature similar to what Glaucon had attempted to make himself into, without the extra bits dragged in along with everything else.
Glaucon envied him, a little. At least Connor did not look like a mishmash of different creatures all thrown together in a jumbled, disordered mix.
"I don't much like him, but ..."
Their swords clanged together. In addition to everything else, Connor had grown up in a manner similar to his: living in a world that was not made for humans. Connor, however, had had the advantage of his heritage, and his adoptive father to teach him. Glaucon had been small, human, and frail, and he had had no one.
"... he's all we've got."
Glaucon's eyebrows shot up at that, and they stopped sparring for a moment by mutual unspoken agreement. It was so much easier to read Connor's posture and body language. He didn't quite understand why.
"Surely there are others, though," Glaucon said, rolling his shoulder and stretching out sore muscles. "Other chosen ones from other prophecies. Other ... folk," he remembered just in time not to call Connor's father a creature, no matter whether or not they were on friendly terms today. "Who are as powerful or as influential, or have a character similar to his."
Connor shook his head, then rolled it around on his neck. "If there are, either we haven't run into them, or they haven't worked out. I don't know why, but for some reason, whatever Angel does winds up turning out at least mostly right. More right than when other people do it."
And by that grimace Connor knew exactly how grim a thought that was.
They resumed fighting, neither of them able to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Glaucon rather liked sparring with Connor; it was a little like sparring with one of his old friends. Connor as quick in mind as well as quick in body, he learned fast what he was shown, and he had a few new techniques to battle the creatures he had encountered that he could teach the half-demon. They were also the only ones among all of them, even among all their varied experiences, who were used to constant practice and constant battle. The reality of being on the practice field one morning and then finding oneself on the field of battle in the afternoon, with no prior warning. And having done so over and over again.
And, more than the others, Connor was safe. He had been an outcast as well, his entire childhood stolen away by a hunter who hated Angel, and he had been raised to loathe his father and mother. He had been reshaped as Glaucon had been reshaped, and both of them were strange to the company in which they found themselves. It gave them a peculiar bonding point that Illyria wrinkled her face over, but did not forbid.
Connor hit with a force that rattled up along his arm, pushed him as hard as he pushed. He wouldn't have dared spar with the boy before he was fully recovered, and even now that he had he found it more of a challenge than he expected. Perhaps it was also a good lesson not to underestimate human-shaped creatures.
This time it was Connor who signaled the stop, and he put up his sword entirely. Glaucon followed him and sat down beside him on the steps of the hotel.
"Think we're ready for the latest apocalypse?"
For a moment Glaucon didn't think he'd heard the boy quite right. "Latest apocalypse?"
Connor shrugged. "Sure. That's something else you get used to. Around Angel? There's always another apocalypse."
The half-demon took another moment to figure that one out, then shook his head. It didn't entirely surprise him that they had these sorts of world-ending events with any degree of regularity. The way they talked about it, it might be as often as one every moon cycle. It even wouldn't have surprised him if they'd had one a week. One a year. This world went too fast in some ways and didn't go fast enough in others, was too slow to learn and too quick to act and it would be falling apart at the edges. Accelerating to the end. Only the end came over and over again, and he said so. Connor didn't know if that was why, he just knew it happened.
"Not an existence I would prefer," Glaucon snorted, scrubbing a towel over his face and passing one to Connor.
The young man snorted. "Amen to that."
Showers, after the workout. It was one of the things he liked best about this world: the plumbing. The running water pouring over him, like standing under a waterfall, washing him clean. An endless supply of it.
It was a sign of the wealth of this world, that even the poorest had water that ran this way, and sweets to eat, things like that. That they took these things for granted, and gave a great hue and cry when they didn't have them. He pulled off a chunk of bread for his after-sparring meal and dressed, went back downstairs but Connor was still the only one in the building, or at least this part of it. They looked at each other and shrugged.
"That's not a bad idea," Connor pointed at the piece of bread.
"Would you like some?"
He shrugged. "Just going to head to the kitchens, if you want to come."
Glaucon did. He wanted something more than just the bread, so they scavenged around for the supplies to put together a meal. Bread and butter and cheese, fruits, some cold meats. It would do.
They perched on the tables while they ate, talking in between huge bites of food. "Why are you here, anyway?" Connor asked, cocking a suspicious look at him that was at the same time so habitual to the young man that it was inoffensive. Glaucon remembered being that suspicious when he had been young, himself, in a strange city populated mostly by things that wanted to kill and/or eat him.
"Because she is here," he shrugged. That was all the reason he had, all the reason he felt he needed to have. Connor frowned at him anyway.
"I don't understand..." he shook his head. "Why does she matter so much to you, though? I mean, from what Wesley says..."
His lip curled. "Wesley does not understand loyalty. He does not understand..." No, that wasn't entirely true, he had been around the human long enough to know that he understood somewhat of loyalty to a person, to an idea, the concept of unswerving loyalty even if he was not capable of it himself. "He does not understand what it is like for us."
"Try me."
Glaucon gave Connor a look, eyebrows raised, face disbelieving. As simple as that, compress two hundred years or more of service and a hundred or so more years of growth and learning into fifteen minutes of conversation. He would try, though. Because Connor had requested it, and because of all the folk his Goddess had introduced him to Connor was the one he thought would most understand.
"She found me after a battle; I do not think she even knew my name or the name I had given to my land and my people at the time. I was simply a soldier to her, a soldier who was still alive after I had been nearly cut in half. All that held me together was ..." One hand came back up along his back, over his skin. Connor's eyes widened. "She healed me. She saved my life."
"And because of that, you owe her?" The disdain in his voice mocked everything Glaucon lived for, infuriated him, made him dig his talons into the sandwich he was holding. Rather than get the sandwich all over his hand, he put it down carefully.
Shaking his head, he took a deep breath. "No. Because I choose to, I owe her. I am grateful for the life she has given me, a life that has greater stability and meaning than any I could have created for myself. Not only for saving and restoring my physical form, but also for directing me and helping me to be greater than I was before."
He stopped when he saw comprehension in the boy's eyes and realized that he did understand that. The way he had explained it, perhaps. The boy may have seen or heard something of his father in what he was picturing now. His adopted father.
"Family isn't... always what you're born with," he said, slowly, as though he were thinking it over, hesitant, as though he wasn't sure that was what Glaucon meant. It was close enough. "Sometimes family just... happens."
He felt his lips curve upwards just a tiny bit. "Sometimes it does. And no amount of forcing can make family where it is not, and no amount of arguing from the outside can take it away where it has formed, when it is there."
Connor snorted. "You got that right." Glaucon's eyebrows shot up.
"Exactly how much arguing has the half-breed..."
The boy even laughed a little at that.
"... excuse me. Angel. How much arguing has this Angel done?"
He rolled his eyes, sliding off the counter they had been perching on. "Enough. I don't care what he says about what Holtz did before, that man protected me, all his life he spent protecting me. Taking care of me. Angel spends his life helping people who won't remember his name in a year."
Glaucon nodded slightly. "He expects to be a part of your life when he has not made you a part of his. It should not surprise him that you are aloof."
"You know..." Connor's eyes narrowed at him. "It's kind of sad that you get it and he hasn't figured it out yet. I mean, you were part of, what, an empire of thousands?"
"Billions." At least as he understood the number. "But still, she spoke to me. She listened when I advised her and she allowed me to walk in her gardens. We... were close, even before." That part, he still didn't know how to explain. "And more than that, I found others in her service who shared Her worship and who did make a place in their lives for me, as I did for them."
That seemed to be clearer, and he softened. Somewhat. "What happened?"
"They died."
Fandom: Angel: The Series
Characters: Illyria, Glaucon (OC), Gunn, Wesley, Angel, Connor
Word Count: ~13,000 words
Rating: PG-13 (It's a surprisingly tame apocalypse)
Summary: At the end of all things (again), Glaucon reflects on how this end of the world reflects the end of his world when he was a soldier of the Goddess Illyria of Primordium.
Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4
"I told you!"
A muscle in Glaucon's jaw twitched. That human was irritatingly loud. Illyria stared back at him with the sort of expression she reserved for idiots right before she did something reprimanding and often violent.
"I told you this would wind up being one of those big battles, with the damn dragon and all that bullshit. I told you that wouldn't work!"
"Sit down," the half-breed said, quietly but in a tone that matched his Goddess's expression.
"And what do you plan to do about..."
"Sit! Down!"
Glaucon winced. So did at least two others in the room.
The half-breed rose, paced a slow circle around the chair where he had been sitting, bridge of his nose pinched between thumb and forefinger. No one spoke. The Goddess folded her arms and waited for them to decide what they were going to do, and Glaucon stood behind her with his hands clasped behind his back, one hand around the other wrist, as he had been for the last fifteen minutes. Everyone else darted their glances from one to the other, waiting and unsettled.
After long enough that everyone but the two from Primordium were becoming fidgety, the half-breed rested his hands on the back of the chair and leaned on it, looking over at the Goddess. "Isn't there something else we can do?"
"There is nothing. To stand aside would be seen as weakness, and you would be slaughtered. Any attempt to negotiate would be met with demands you would not be willing to fulfill..." and after years enough of dealing with the half-breed and his people, she would know that. "... and you would be slaughtered. If you are able to come up with a way to infiltrate his domain and surgically remove him and his immediate staff I would be willing to entertain a suggestion." But that was said in the dry tone she used when she thought everyone was being very foolish and would not be able to come up with something appropriate to suggest, anyway.
Glaucon closed his eyes a moment, only his eyes, and thought back to when there had been a strategy table that displayed the layout of the territory in which they would fight, with small figurines to represent the fielded troop. How they had argued in quiet and calm tones back and forth over that table, long into the night and the following morning, who would shift where and what that would do to their front lines, their supply lines.
He opened his eyes. No one had any suggestions. Open battle it was to be, not so much the specialty of any here. Except them, perhaps.
They were, he had to admit, rapidly becoming more skilled at planning out or at least anticipating the flow of single-battle skirmishes, though.
"The conjunction is on his side, not ours." That was from the quiet human, who had been studying, learning. "He was born at the right time, and in the right place, and he learned that and is taking advantage of this. Like..."
"You mean like Superman."
Glaucon had no idea what the human was talking about, but the others seemed to. The scholar heaved an impatient sigh. "Yes. Like Superman. We may not be looking at an apocalypse, but we are looking at a dictator and a despot who is not ignorant of the advantages he is about to have, nor does he miss an opportunity. We should consider that Illyria is right..."
High Priest or not, she gave him a very ugly look.
"... and that battle may be the only option."
No one liked the sound of that. There was shifting, fidgeting, the pallid half-breed muttered something in his strange lyrical voice and left to prepare his people. The green-skinned empath was the next to leave, muttering something about certain death and going out with a bang and not a whimper, to which several of the others snickered.
Illyria's hand brushed down his arm, and she nodded over to the pile of texts the scholar had assembled. "If there is anything further to be found in those books, you will be the one to find it." It was both an order and a quiet word of praise, which further underscored the gravity of the situation. She was sparing of her praise, even for him.
Glaucon nodded, "As my Goddess wishes," and went to the books. The scholar moved aside for him; he must have been forewarned that Glaucon would be reading over his work.
The human, or at least, human-like creature, gave him a strange look as he took up the seat in front of the ancient texts. Glaucon thought it was contemplative, but it had been some time since he'd been around humans and his skill at reading their expressions was somewhat diminished.
He wondered, a little, what that was for. He would have to ask his Goddess later what she and the human spoke about, regarding himself, when he had a moment where it was appropriate.
For once, the human was not shouting.
The half-breed and the loud human were talking in low tones, quiet but enunciated and smooth. Their heads were bent low together and though neither of them looked up, Glaucon could see their shoulders and back tensing every time there was the sound of movement around them.
"He's been here for ten months, Gunn, and you haven't said a word."
"That's ten months he wasn't doing anything but laying there. Ten months he was sitting peaceful in her temple and it didn't matter. Now he's out here in the world with the rest of us? It matters."
They were talking about him. His ears perked up while his head stayed bent over his work.
"Why does it matter? No, don't answer that." Good, because it was a stupid question, even Glaucon thought so. "Why didn't you say something sooner? You had to know that he was going to get out of the temple eventually. He's been out and walking around for six months, you had to know that eventually he would be coming here and working with us. Where else is he going to go?"
Glaucon didn't have an answer for that. Neither, apparently, did the loud human.
"I was hoping she'd get rid of him once he'd..."
"Yeah, you know better than that."
"I know."
Get rid of him. Glaucon's fingers curled together, talon tips digging into his hand. As though his Goddess would get rid of him like a piece of trash from the streets. Of course not. He knew that. They did as well.
"He's her last follower," the half-breed was saying. "He's... the last person she knows from the time and place she came from. They're going to stick together, and you just, you might as well get used to that."
Squeaky shoes moved slightly farther away, closer again on the linoleum floor, then crossed to carpet. That was the human, he thought. Pacing. He wanted to pace, a bit, but still didn't look up. Their decisions would not affect his fate. Only his Goddess could do that. No matter what they said.
"I don't trust him."
"I know you don't trust him. I don't trust him either."
No, and that at least he could sympathize with. They were right not to trust him. They barely knew him, and even if his allegiance was sworn to his Goddess and her allegiance had been established to them, that did not mean that he had given them any reason to trust him. If he were them he wouldn't have trusted him either.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I? I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to keep an eye on him, and if he does anything at all shifty, I'm going to shoot him. See if that helps."
The human snorted. "Sounds like a plan to me."
And that was the end of that conversation.
He turned his attention back to the document he was translating, only just catching the footsteps as one set led back onto the carpet and up the stairs, the other out into the lobby. Neither of them came near his little alcove, what used to be some place for a clerk to sit by the look of things and now his private little workstation. Out of sight of the others.
They did not want to see him. They did not want to imagine that he was there. He was a stranger to them, and worse, he was a thing. A creature, a demon.
This should not bother him as much as it did.
Evening fell. Everyone went to eat, then to a social hour, then to their rooms to sleep. Glaucon remained awake, sitting at the desk, studying and translating.
"You should rest."
It had been a long time since she had used that tone on him. Since she had touched him. At least, here it had. When they were in this place, the home of the others, they were the Goddess and the Soldier. When they were in the temple they could be who they wanted to be to each other with little risk of being seen and subjected to idiotic questions.
He supposed it was because everyone was asleep. Or feigning sleep in the hopes of not disturbing anyone else. Of all the behaviors he had seen in the people of this world, that was one he could understand.
"I will rest when I am done." But he covered her hand with his. His hand was so much bigger than hers, now, and it would always be so in the future. This still felt strange to him, and yet it also pleased him that she had a form so compatible with his. A form that he could touch and hold. When she was all he had left he found he wanted to touch and hold her a great deal more.
It was worse when they were here, among those who were supposed to be their allies, and he was the outcast.
Her fingers carded through his hair, careful not to break the feather-like strands. "You are troubled." It was not a question.
Glaucon nodded when her hand had moved to the back of his shoulder. "We may yet die tomorrow. You have died once before; I was near to death twice. I do not want to die."
He stated it plainly, without emotion, but looking up at her with earnest eyes. She was so old, he felt much like a child around her sometimes. Like now, when she smiled down at him with tolerant amusement and his chest twisted. She so rarely smiled.
"I do not believe that any of us wishes to die. We simply wish the alternative to battle to occur considerably less. You do not wish to be a slave to..." His expression confirmed it before she had finished the sentence. "Nor does anyone here."
"What concerns me is not that any of us wish to die but that they may not be so concerned with whether or not I survive the coming battles." He remembered the importance of being able to trust and depend on your fellow in battle, remembered how that lesson was rammed into him time and time again by his commanders. He remembered seeing it in action. "They do not trust me. I do not look like them, I do not speak like them. They..." he snorted. "They do not look like each other, but they share history. They share at least one language, and all the knowledge of how this world is. I do not. I am alien to them in every part."
Her fingers soothed through his hair again. "They were all unknown to each other, once. I was unknown to them. They are, for all their faults, very adaptable. As are you," and that, too, was praise, and a demand to live up to her expectations. "You will find your place among them, and you will not die tomorrow."
And that was her final word on the matter, and so the subject was closed. She stayed with him for some time after, combing her fingers through his hair, and he stayed to read. As the sky began to lighten again she stepped away he caught her hands in his, clasped them together, cupping his hands around hers.
"My Goddess," he said, in their old language, and it meant more than that. She was all that he had in the world.
She stepped forward and kissed his forehead, to where she came up even with her standing and him seated. "You will not die tomorrow," she repeated, firmly. "Now go and prepare."
"Yes, my Goddess."
She smiled.
The city was in ruins. Structures broken on top of structures piled on top of rubble, everything collapsed and the debris spread across the roads. Fires had warped the buildings so much that they could no longer support themselves.
There were no longer bodies in the streets. They had erased the immediate toll of the insurrection from view, but there were also no more market stalls, no wandering folk who lived in the city, no one in the streets without a most likely sinister purpose. Soldiers, for the most part. Workers trying to keep what buildings were still standing upright for the time being. Servitors of their new lords examining what they had won. Other than that, everyone was staying in what shelters they had found and waiting to see how the dust settled.
Glaucon stared out the window at the city and tried to make his mind function despite the constant shrieking of his inner thoughts that said this was wrong, wrong. This could not be the way things were.
She was dead. Except she couldn't be dead because she was immortal. His Goddess was gone, except she couldn't be gone because she was the Goddess. There was nothing left for him here except there had to be something because this was where his life was. This was everything. This was.
Empty and broken. This was broken.
His fingers curled into the edge of the windowsill, palms caked in dust and sweat. He bowed his head as his shoulders tensed and locked, the muscles of his neck knotting uncomfortably. Below, his friend Llan was likely mobilizing soldiers to try and hold the palace, if it could be held, or discussing what was to be done with their Captain if that was not the decision made. He should go down and join them. He should do something. His mind refused to realize where he should be except curled up in a ball in the corner or standing in the window stretched to the fullest extent of the frame, screaming.
Screaming out of the window would be useless, and bring nothing but trouble. There was already a great deal of screaming going on and betraying a weakness would only get him killed as well.
"You are not joining us?"
He didn't turn around. "I thought you would be in conference already."
His friend's fur ruffled; he had made that noise he always did when his fur ruffled from head to toe. Only louder. They were both equally unsettled by what had happened. "We ... were waiting for the last few to arrive."
It wasn't hard to interpret that for what it was; that he had waited and finally likely had told them to begin when he returned so he could go and fetch their over-tall and feather-headed member from his rooms above. She had granted him rooms above when he had expressed, however reluctant he had been to ask for them, a wish to be closer to the sky. Something about the vulture demon he had consumed; ever since then he had preferred to be higher up and close to the open sky.
He did not want to remember that right now. He didn't want to remember any part of that right now.
"Glaucon." His friend did not step closer to him, did not come into the inner room. Glaucon realized with a fresh swell of pain that his friend was afraid of what he might do. "Your men need you. You have an obligation."
No, he wanted to say. My obligations died with her.
But she would not have approved of that.
He nodded. "I'll be there in half a breath." His nails dug into the wall of the building, but he waited several moments after his friend had left for his composure to come back before he turned and followed the other demon down to the meeting.
Nothing was right, anymore. Nothing was safe.
"You're not wrong..."
The human-looking child, though Glaucon was told to understand that he was no longer a child, was strong for his species. Progeny of two half-breeds, he looked entirely human but was not. His speed was greater, his strength, his reflexes. He was a human-looking creature similar to what Glaucon had attempted to make himself into, without the extra bits dragged in along with everything else.
Glaucon envied him, a little. At least Connor did not look like a mishmash of different creatures all thrown together in a jumbled, disordered mix.
"I don't much like him, but ..."
Their swords clanged together. In addition to everything else, Connor had grown up in a manner similar to his: living in a world that was not made for humans. Connor, however, had had the advantage of his heritage, and his adoptive father to teach him. Glaucon had been small, human, and frail, and he had had no one.
"... he's all we've got."
Glaucon's eyebrows shot up at that, and they stopped sparring for a moment by mutual unspoken agreement. It was so much easier to read Connor's posture and body language. He didn't quite understand why.
"Surely there are others, though," Glaucon said, rolling his shoulder and stretching out sore muscles. "Other chosen ones from other prophecies. Other ... folk," he remembered just in time not to call Connor's father a creature, no matter whether or not they were on friendly terms today. "Who are as powerful or as influential, or have a character similar to his."
Connor shook his head, then rolled it around on his neck. "If there are, either we haven't run into them, or they haven't worked out. I don't know why, but for some reason, whatever Angel does winds up turning out at least mostly right. More right than when other people do it."
And by that grimace Connor knew exactly how grim a thought that was.
They resumed fighting, neither of them able to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Glaucon rather liked sparring with Connor; it was a little like sparring with one of his old friends. Connor as quick in mind as well as quick in body, he learned fast what he was shown, and he had a few new techniques to battle the creatures he had encountered that he could teach the half-demon. They were also the only ones among all of them, even among all their varied experiences, who were used to constant practice and constant battle. The reality of being on the practice field one morning and then finding oneself on the field of battle in the afternoon, with no prior warning. And having done so over and over again.
And, more than the others, Connor was safe. He had been an outcast as well, his entire childhood stolen away by a hunter who hated Angel, and he had been raised to loathe his father and mother. He had been reshaped as Glaucon had been reshaped, and both of them were strange to the company in which they found themselves. It gave them a peculiar bonding point that Illyria wrinkled her face over, but did not forbid.
Connor hit with a force that rattled up along his arm, pushed him as hard as he pushed. He wouldn't have dared spar with the boy before he was fully recovered, and even now that he had he found it more of a challenge than he expected. Perhaps it was also a good lesson not to underestimate human-shaped creatures.
This time it was Connor who signaled the stop, and he put up his sword entirely. Glaucon followed him and sat down beside him on the steps of the hotel.
"Think we're ready for the latest apocalypse?"
For a moment Glaucon didn't think he'd heard the boy quite right. "Latest apocalypse?"
Connor shrugged. "Sure. That's something else you get used to. Around Angel? There's always another apocalypse."
The half-demon took another moment to figure that one out, then shook his head. It didn't entirely surprise him that they had these sorts of world-ending events with any degree of regularity. The way they talked about it, it might be as often as one every moon cycle. It even wouldn't have surprised him if they'd had one a week. One a year. This world went too fast in some ways and didn't go fast enough in others, was too slow to learn and too quick to act and it would be falling apart at the edges. Accelerating to the end. Only the end came over and over again, and he said so. Connor didn't know if that was why, he just knew it happened.
"Not an existence I would prefer," Glaucon snorted, scrubbing a towel over his face and passing one to Connor.
The young man snorted. "Amen to that."
Showers, after the workout. It was one of the things he liked best about this world: the plumbing. The running water pouring over him, like standing under a waterfall, washing him clean. An endless supply of it.
It was a sign of the wealth of this world, that even the poorest had water that ran this way, and sweets to eat, things like that. That they took these things for granted, and gave a great hue and cry when they didn't have them. He pulled off a chunk of bread for his after-sparring meal and dressed, went back downstairs but Connor was still the only one in the building, or at least this part of it. They looked at each other and shrugged.
"That's not a bad idea," Connor pointed at the piece of bread.
"Would you like some?"
He shrugged. "Just going to head to the kitchens, if you want to come."
Glaucon did. He wanted something more than just the bread, so they scavenged around for the supplies to put together a meal. Bread and butter and cheese, fruits, some cold meats. It would do.
They perched on the tables while they ate, talking in between huge bites of food. "Why are you here, anyway?" Connor asked, cocking a suspicious look at him that was at the same time so habitual to the young man that it was inoffensive. Glaucon remembered being that suspicious when he had been young, himself, in a strange city populated mostly by things that wanted to kill and/or eat him.
"Because she is here," he shrugged. That was all the reason he had, all the reason he felt he needed to have. Connor frowned at him anyway.
"I don't understand..." he shook his head. "Why does she matter so much to you, though? I mean, from what Wesley says..."
His lip curled. "Wesley does not understand loyalty. He does not understand..." No, that wasn't entirely true, he had been around the human long enough to know that he understood somewhat of loyalty to a person, to an idea, the concept of unswerving loyalty even if he was not capable of it himself. "He does not understand what it is like for us."
"Try me."
Glaucon gave Connor a look, eyebrows raised, face disbelieving. As simple as that, compress two hundred years or more of service and a hundred or so more years of growth and learning into fifteen minutes of conversation. He would try, though. Because Connor had requested it, and because of all the folk his Goddess had introduced him to Connor was the one he thought would most understand.
"She found me after a battle; I do not think she even knew my name or the name I had given to my land and my people at the time. I was simply a soldier to her, a soldier who was still alive after I had been nearly cut in half. All that held me together was ..." One hand came back up along his back, over his skin. Connor's eyes widened. "She healed me. She saved my life."
"And because of that, you owe her?" The disdain in his voice mocked everything Glaucon lived for, infuriated him, made him dig his talons into the sandwich he was holding. Rather than get the sandwich all over his hand, he put it down carefully.
Shaking his head, he took a deep breath. "No. Because I choose to, I owe her. I am grateful for the life she has given me, a life that has greater stability and meaning than any I could have created for myself. Not only for saving and restoring my physical form, but also for directing me and helping me to be greater than I was before."
He stopped when he saw comprehension in the boy's eyes and realized that he did understand that. The way he had explained it, perhaps. The boy may have seen or heard something of his father in what he was picturing now. His adopted father.
"Family isn't... always what you're born with," he said, slowly, as though he were thinking it over, hesitant, as though he wasn't sure that was what Glaucon meant. It was close enough. "Sometimes family just... happens."
He felt his lips curve upwards just a tiny bit. "Sometimes it does. And no amount of forcing can make family where it is not, and no amount of arguing from the outside can take it away where it has formed, when it is there."
Connor snorted. "You got that right." Glaucon's eyebrows shot up.
"Exactly how much arguing has the half-breed..."
The boy even laughed a little at that.
"... excuse me. Angel. How much arguing has this Angel done?"
He rolled his eyes, sliding off the counter they had been perching on. "Enough. I don't care what he says about what Holtz did before, that man protected me, all his life he spent protecting me. Taking care of me. Angel spends his life helping people who won't remember his name in a year."
Glaucon nodded slightly. "He expects to be a part of your life when he has not made you a part of his. It should not surprise him that you are aloof."
"You know..." Connor's eyes narrowed at him. "It's kind of sad that you get it and he hasn't figured it out yet. I mean, you were part of, what, an empire of thousands?"
"Billions." At least as he understood the number. "But still, she spoke to me. She listened when I advised her and she allowed me to walk in her gardens. We... were close, even before." That part, he still didn't know how to explain. "And more than that, I found others in her service who shared Her worship and who did make a place in their lives for me, as I did for them."
That seemed to be clearer, and he softened. Somewhat. "What happened?"
"They died."