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Melinoë's rocking hips slows down to a sluggish pace, her knees and thighs finally cramping and giving up on her after a long night of seemingly endless toil. Exhausted, she collapses with a grunt, her lungs still trying to catch enough air for her to form any words. She reaches her spectral hand past the lit candles on the shelf near the top of her bedding. Carefully, she blindly feels for something, her reddened face now buried in the neck of her partner, the air inside her tent thick with the smell of sweat and sex.
If the massive titan underneath her wasn't a dead giveaway to any potential nosy shade who dared to take a peek into the princess' tent, the azure candlelight would immediately disclose to anyone perceptive enough that the Titan of Foresight had passed through her chambers on that night.
Finally, Melinoë found the piece cloth she was looking for, pulling it free from underneath a stack of books and parchment, mindful not to knock over the precariously placed candles. With a whine and a grimace, she slowly dislodges herself as she moves to lay besides a still panting Prometheus—utterly blissed out and body completely loosened as if ready to fall asleep. Melinoë couldn't help the tiny smirk that formed across her lips at the sight of the man beside her, knowing it was her who made him like this.
"Hah… Who would have thought this was all it took to finally shut your mouth up?" she spoke in a low tone as she casually used the cloth to wipe the mess between her legs.
Prometheus stirs awake immediately—having seemingly slept for only a few seconds—a clear frown forming on his face at her comment. "You shall find yourself swiftly and thoroughly disappointed with your assumption, princess." Sitting upright, he reaches an open hand towards her. "Here."
Smiling coyly, Melinoë handed over the cloth and laid back down on the crumpled, sweaty sheets, spreading her legs and allowing him to continue her handiwork. Prometheus worked slow and gentle. Perhaps too gentle if the bruises in the shapes of his digits that were already forming at her hips had anything to say. But Melinoë could hardly complain at having the titan at her service like so and taking such nice care of her, at that.
"How come? Do you usually make it a habit of talking your partner's ear off both during and after sex?" At that, Prometheus applied more pressure to his strokes between her folds, making her hiss at how sensitive she still was and shooting him a harsh look right after.
Prometheus finished cleaning her up before giving himself a quick wipe down and discarding the rag somewhere out of sight. "In the past, I rarely made it a habit of remaining after the fact."
"Oh," Melinoë whispered to herself, slowly turning her head and looking away from him. "Well that's…perfectly fine. If you wish to go—"
"Granted," he interrupts her, a hand reaching to turn her face towards him again, his red eyes dim yet content, "that was in the past. I see no reason why we can't continue our usual conversations."
Melinoë doesn't notice the smile that forms across her lips at that, but Prometheus most certainly does.
She scoots over to the side, patting down the space next to her and inviting him to lay back down. Without another word, Prometheus complies. He doesn't beckon her to huddle over and neither does she insist, content in sharing her space with him as they are. Still, something in her demeanor must have given her away because he extends an arm in her direction, as if asking her to lay her head on his bicep. Melinoë does, though not without missing the barely concealed grin on Prometheus' face.
"Oh hush," she lightly smacks his chest, cuddling his side with a pout.
Prometheus lowers his hand to her hips , bringing her even closer. "I have not said a word."
Though his flames don't envelop his hand at the moment, the molten heat that emanates from it still travels up and down her torso, the hotness soothing the bruises from their earlier lovemaking and making her inadvertently seek his touch.
"Why did you do that?—if you don't mind me asking," Melinoë asks while looking up at a darkened spot in the tent's ceiling. Now that she finally sharpens her senses, she hears the sound of croaking as it drizzles outside. "Leave others, I mean."
Prometheus lets out a huff, amused. He shifts his position for his body to face hers, interlacing their legs. "Do I strike you as the kind to do otherwise, princess? The kind to tend to the every need and whim of my partner?"
"Yes, you do," Melinoë responds in a similarly lighthearted tone, her gaze finding his own, "you have proven as much earlier, which is why I'm curious as to what caused the change of heart with me on this night."
They both search the others' eyes for something. She looks for discomfort—an eye twitch or perhaps a slightly furrowed brow that signals she has overstepped in her query—yet she catches nothing. He searches for distorted intentions—looking through past visions that dwell inside his head that could tell on the princess and reveal some ulterior motive behind the seemingly airy conversion—but his foresight reveals nothing to him.
Prometheus closes his eyes, being the first to break eye contact and settles on his back once again, Melinoë still holding on to him. "Many gods and deities,as you can imagine, yearn to know what their future holds," he begins. "Wether they will continue to hold influence over mortalkind with them making sacrifices in their honor…or if the sands of time shall claim their name and relevancy sooner rather than later. Being so susceptible to it themselves, many of them assumed wine and sex would be plenty dull my senses and make my tongue loose."
Melinoë listened carefully, trying to get a read on his mostly neutral expression. Though Prometheus' words weren't coated in his particular brand of venom when referring to her Olympian family, he most certainly didn't speak in a kind manner of their antics, either. He mostly sounds irked at recalling such things. As if such events from his past on Olympus took place with enough frequency that it became more of a nuisance than anything.
"How impudent of them," she says as she cuddles closer. "They had no idea all they needed the do to get you talking was fighting you to the death every other night."
Prometheus can't help the light chuckle that escapes him. It's a little strange to hear him laugh so openly, Melinoë finds. His voice pitches slightly and the deep scowl that he often wears is replaced by easiness and mirth. She finds herself rather enamored with it.
"You are…different," Prometheus starts again, "in every sense of the word."
The sudden honesty pulls Melinoë out of her thoughts. "You mean because I dispatched an ancient, nigh unkillable beast and prevented the total collapse of Olympus and the Underworld as we know it?" she jokes.
Prometheus turns his head to look at her, their noses almost touching. "Because you brought about an age for mortals."
"Oh," she remains quiet for a moment. "I…had forgotten about that. I believe you give me too much credit. I barely got a few sentences in with the Fates." Her gaze inadvertently drifts away from his', memories from that fateful meeting racing through her mind. "They more than likely simply entertained my suggestion because they thought it would be amusing to watch my Lord Uncle grapple with his eventual loss of power."
Prometheus brings his thumb and forefinger to her chin, bringing Melinoë's attention back to him. "Whatever their reasoning was, it does not change the outcome. You seized the opportunity despite there being no benefit to you. You took the risk of offending the Fates—having them think you presumed to hold any sway in their weavings, arbitrary as they may have been." He inches ever closer, almost as if fearing someone outside the tent could hear. The charred hand at her waist tightens just the slightest. "Should notice of your influence reach Olympus you would have much to answer for. Your achievement is nothing to scoff at."
Melinoë's eyes widen as a fuzzy feeling swells in her chest, her voice stunned by the bold sincerity of his praise. She fails at coming up with the words to form a decent response. Instead she hides her face in the crook of his shoulder. She feels how his hand comes to comb a lock of hair behind her ear, his lips kissing the top of her head.
"What do you see in the future?" Melinoë's voice finds her after a short while. "…Our future."
"You know I cannot speak on that, Melinoë." His voice is low, but firm in its resolve.
Melinoë raises her face towards him once again. "Then, what about the past? Before now—before this very moment. Did—" he brows furrow, thinking how to best articulate her words, "Did you ever foresee me failing?" she asks, her voice just above a whisper.
Prometheus doesn't answer right away, mulling over his own words along with his foresight. Slowly, he sits up on the bed, dragging her along. He settles her on his lap, her legs instinctively coming to wrap around his hips, hands bracing on his chest as she stares at him with bated breath.
"Prometheus?" she asks, a touch of concern peeking through that he indents to erase.
"Your victory against Typhon and your grandfather Chronos were always bound to happen. Never did I foresee anything different," he finally responds, not missing the way her eyes catch a glimmer of the candlelight at the revelation. "The circumstances that would lead to it though… Why, they were quite varied. Perhaps even infinite."
Melinoë cants her head lightly to one side. "Infinite?"
"I only speculate," he shrugs, his hands running along hers sides in what he hopes is a soothing motion. "Infinite possibilities and all, even more so with the Fates having put down their tools. Doubtless not every course of action was revealed to me, only the ones that had any chance at coming to pass."
Melinoë is pensive for a moment, her brow a tad creased. "I see… And how many were those?"
"Many," he responds.
"Many?" she blinks.
"That is what I said."
"Well that's not saying much."
Prometheus smirks, pinching her hip in a playful gesture. "Earlier you seemed to express distaste at hearing me talk for too long."
Melinoë returns the gesture by wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling on the hair at his nape, their lips almost brushing. "Only when your mouth could be doing something else."
He pulls back, putting some distance between them once again. "To put it simply, we would have all returned to Chaos by the time I was done going through every single possibility I witnessed."
Admittedly, the comparison does help put things into perspective in Melinoë's mind, making her wonder how he hasn't gone mad at the sheer number of visions that have been revealed to him throughout his existence.
"And whatever occurs with those futures that did not happen?" she asks, ghostly finger twiddling with one of his earrings, the precious stone catching the ray of light that peeks through the tent's narrow opening. "Could they perhaps be visions of somewhere else entirely? Perhaps in a different yet similar reality to ours like the ones I travel to each night to defeat Typhon and Chronos."
"Perhaps," Prometheus entertains the notion for a second, wondering what implications her words could carry. "But I simply do not know. Once a vision has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will not come to pass, I disregard it. There is no benefit in dwelling on what-ifs."
For all their clashes and disagreements, on that, at least, Melinoë can agree with him. Having trained all her life to defeat Chronos and claim back the family that was denied to her at birth, she knows dwelling in what-could-have-beens for too long only brings about more pain and resentment—the kind that only turns into unbridled, bitter rage if left unchecked.
"I suppose that makes sense. After all, having a bunch of visions of futures that never occurred living constantly in your head can only serve to drive you mad or, in your particular case, even madder," she teases, a grin plastered on her face that she makes no attempt at hiding.
Prometheus smiles as well, comfortable with the taunt mingling in her words. "Indeed." he simply responds as he goes to lay back down, Melinoë on top of him and firm under his grasp.
They lay there in silence; her head pillowed in the crook of his neck that still holds the smell of their earlier activities; his hands lazily exploring the curves up and down her body in slow, calculated motions.
Prometheus is the first to break the stillness. "To be entirely transparent with you, there… There are some futures that didn't come to pass which I can never seem to push out of my mind."
Melinoë's interest is peaked at his sudden admission. "Oh?"
"It's only a small handful—no more than that—but they have prolonged their stay no matter how much I long to be rid of them." Melinoë doesn't know if Prometheus is aware he's moved his hand up to pet her head, as if trying to keep busy or soothe himself somehow. "I think myself perfectly capable of discarding overtly hopeful visions easily. They have a tendency to show a future world that is far too perfect, you see. Almost eerily so. But the less favorable ones…" his hand movements cease briefly before continuing, his voice a lower and darker tone. "Why, they seem to stuck around like damn leeches. Even more when they were so close to coming to pass…"
"Prometheus?" she mulls over her next words carefully before raising her head to look directly at him. "Was… Was there ever a future where we never saw eye-to-eye like this?" If there are infinite possibilities, then surely this hypothetical future must exist somewhere, she presumes. What she really meant to ask, though, is wether such a future was ever too close to happening. Melinoë knows herself well enough to guess the answer, though.
Prometheus holds her gaze, lips slightly parted. He remains utterly silent apart from his breathing and rise and fall of his chest. It is only then that Melinoë catches a semblance of sadness in him, eyes flaring up for the briefest moment.
"There is one particular vision which I have not discarded from my mind. Because, even now, as we are like this, it still haunts me." Prometheus takes a deep breath, his calm heartbeat beginning to race in his chest. "You succeeded in your task, as expected, but you remained entirely devout to the gods—believing their every judgment and action was justified somehow—and overtime you reclaimed your title in your ancestral home."
Melinoë is stunned into silence. Its difficult to picture herself justifying Athena's cruel treatment of Arachne, the endless curses doled out by Hera upon Heracles and Echo, and even the one placed upon Narcissus by Nemesis. Every other god or titan that she has come to know has something to respond to in regard to their treatment of mortals. Lord Zeus' transgressions alone are practically innumerable. That this blindfolded version of her exists in his mind or—just maybe—somewhere out there…
Prometheus continues. "You would have gone on to live a peaceful, if rather stagnant life, surrounded by your family and those you held near and dear. But—" His words catch on his throat. Melinoë doesn't dare make a sound before he resumes. "But you were never truly seen… Despite obtaining everything you ever fought for, you struggled at adjusting to a life of peace. Never quite grasping how your life led to such a point." Prometheus' embrace on her back tightens an Melinoë is at a loss for words.
Adjusting to peace was something Melinoë knew she would eventually struggle with. Even now, as the possibilities of Chronos and Typhon dwindle every night, its is only a matter of time until the final dawn arrives and they both cease to be in their entirety. Then, and only then, she shall finally lay down her weapons in a world that doesn't need them—and perhaps won't need her—anymore.
Melinoë doesn't know what will happen once that day arrives.
Yet, the fact Prometheus is here with her—sharing this almost tragic future that never came to be—gives her hope. Hope that, whatever their future holds, it will be better. That she will be better. There is no other option. She must be.
Bracing on his chest, she sits up, straddling his waist. "How…unnerving," she finally says, looking anywhere but at him, rubbing both her arms to ease off the sudden cold. "That things could—that I could…have made such choices. That I could have ended like…that."
Prometheus brings a hand to her face, caressing her cheek gently. "There are many different turns your journey could have taken, Melinoë. What I revealed is but one. Do not feel responsible for actions you never took."
"But I could have—"
"Yet you did not," he interrupts, unyielding.
Prometheus reaches his other hand to her face, cradling it and bringing her back down. Chest-to-chest once again, the gap between their lips disappears as he captures hers. A gasp escapes her before Melinoë reciprocates, bracing her arms around his head and caging him under her, aimlessly playing with a loose blue curl around her finger.
When Melinoë raises her head, her eyes open to find him looking straight back. There is no judgment to be found in them—only sincerity, affection, and his endless stubborn resolve.
Melinoë lets out a breathy laugh. "I'm glad I'm here now."
Prometheus smiles back, stealing another quick kiss from her. "As am I."
She smiles a big toothy grin before embracing him as tight as she can.
Prometheus can barely breathe.
A collapsed lung is to be blamed, surely. Or maybe it's his old wounds reopening and spilling puddles of ichor all over the battlefield. Surely they have boiled away by now.
Or perhaps the panting, blood-soaked princess that is digging her knees into his sides as she straddles him and holds a silver dagger to his neck is the cause of his ailment.
The thick smoke and extreme heat raising from the mountain's central hearth beneath them does not help his case, the exhaustion setting in quicker than he would prefer. But neither does it helps hers as she heavily pants, the threatening heat stroke mixed with the limitations of her father's curse serving to leave her struggling for air.
Beads of sweat fall from her forehead onto his face, a feral expression like that of a wounded animal's plastered on her. Contracted pupils, wheat-colored hair caked in blood, cuts and bruises all over her skin and—perhaps worst of it—an unmistakable sneer that oozes nothing but utter loathing.
It seems like his foresight has played a particularly nasty trick on him tonight, distracting him to the point of falling to her in record time.
In the blink of an eye, she pushes her dagger in to go for the kill, aiming to pierce his throat by putting all her weight into it. But Prometheus is quicker, his one flaming hand encompassing both of hers easily, preventing her from putting an end to their battle just yet. Without hesitating, he amps up the temperature, the heat from his fire so intense it would have burned a lesser opponent's body to a crisp instantly. But the princess still persists, his counterattack only serving to rile her up further, somehow managing to place even more force into the hilt of her knife.
Prometheus locks eyes with her and it almost does him in.
The hateful glare from the princess, in turn, never wavers.
Still, he does not dare look away as his flames threaten to consume them both for good. For a split moment, he believes she might succumb to them willingly, the fate of her family be damned once her blood curse drags her back to her ancestral home, vulnerable and ripe for Chronos to lock away with the rest of her lot.
But as he had foreseen, Prometheus is proven wrong as the unbearable fervor of his raging inferno finally forces her off of him with a pained scream, though not before nicking at his exposed side wound.
They both lay there on the brimstone, grunting and hacking up blood. Prometheus can hear her wheezing, as though his flames had sucked out the oxygen right out of her lungs. He does not dare to look at his own damage, feeling the skin of his hand beginning to shed. He just hopes he will have enough strength later for it to heal before he is forced to face her again.
The battle is done and he knows he was the loser for the night. He could make a pitiful attempt at prolonging it, but there is an incessant ringing in his ear and he can barely kneel properly without bracing against the ground, much less stand. The wound in his abdomen only spills more and more ichor as he tries to incorporate himself.
Prometheus raises his head and it's only to find the princess staring him down and angling her blades to his throat once again. How long has she been there, he wonders. Only then can he assess the damage of their scuffle—her neck and chest a red and blackened mess, armor and saffron dress barely holding onto her figure almost leaving her bare, and the unmistakable ruby and emerald set embedded in her skull that refuse to yield not matter what.
So distinct and yet so alike from the goddess his foresight cruelly dangled in front of him.
"Go lick your wounds, Titan," she spits out her final word with venom. If Prometheus didn't know any better, her words would have cut deeper than her blade ever could.
There is no point in prolonging his suffering.
"You gods…" he gasps as his flames carry him away from that wretched mountain, "I hate… you all…"
FIN