Everything seemed so final, so brisk, her heart settled on places beyond where she’d once settled, and he couldn’t fault her for it. So many others had done the same, wandering off into the abyss, time and time again, enticed by other shadows or glimmers of gold; and there he’d stayed, amidst the rocks, the pillars, the snow, the ice, fractured when they didn’t seem to be at all. She apologized for weaknesses, for abandonments, and perhaps that was more than anyone else had ever offered – some never apologizing for their absence, for the way they tossed their cloaks, their mantles, their armor aside, barely glancing back to see the world shift and change without them. He begrudged her with a nod, incapable of saying anything else, not understanding just what to add into the fragments, holes, and slivers left behind – because he was the boy, the youth, the warrior they forgot as soon as they crossed over the apertures and thresholds (like the friend with his sutures, like the girl with fire in her name, like the daughter of a God, like his rain-soaked mother), easily misplaced, consigned, and neglected. Maybe they thought he could endure one more loss because he seemed strong, he seemed capable, he seemed stalwart and valorous and wouldn’t mind if they meandered away, if they threw apart their responsibilities – he’d pick them up, dust them off, and render them for himself. He swallowed down the wall of bitterness threatening to clog his throat, that almost dared to tell her to stay (why wouldn’t anyone – what made them all leave?), but it didn’t pry itself away from his tongue, and he couldn’t muster the selfishness to pervade it into the surroundings. Instead, he moved to oblige her request, nodding again when his vocals seemed barren and stupefied, trying to press his head, high, high, high, like the noble, regal prince he was supposed to be (but god it felt heavy, dragged low, overwhelming, a poorly forged crown with too many things attached). He maneuvered along the landscape back towards the entrance, expecting her to follow, tracing the cobwebs and Machiavellian patterns with his daggers, with his knives, with his otherworldly, ethereal sadness that lanced itself all the way into his bones and stayed there, refusing to bend, to move, to curl and coil away. Separate ways, again.
 
He didn’t tell her what she’d missed. He didn’t relinquish any information about Kaos and the bedlam thereafter. He didn’t speak about his father, because she wouldn’t remember the bold, deadly Reaper, and he couldn’t endure someone else asking about him again, not now, not when the earth seemed intent on splitting him apart. But her final inquiry shuffled his kind features back into place, stripped away the sorrow, clenching tightly, firmly, to the small smile nestled in the crook of his lips. He turned back, eyeing her starlit figure and remembering, recalling, the strength and fortitude, the wily schemes, the quick, crafty endeavors, still chiseled and refined in there, waiting to be rediscovered. “I’m sure,” he bestowed, sculpted just like a thousand of his other promises. “If you ever get to the border, just tell them I sent you.” Then, ever the gentleman, he inclined his cranium towards the outer world, and stepped aside so she could slip out into it once more, gone - and he’d stray, stay, and stand there, for it was all he’d ever done.

Erebos

i have nothing, but then the have is not as good as the want