Work Text:
The day of the draft is cold. Chill wind, bloody sky. About right for Sextilis, Jensen reckons. It's the way they depict it, in the drafting tales they tell down in kindergarten, to ready you for this day. The light will be red, you will dress in white, and you will be drafted. It's just the way it is.
This is the day that the scales fall for you, and you become a true part of the world. This is the day that futures are decided and the Gods appeased. This is the day that it all leads to, and then all follows from. The greatest day of your lives, little draftees. All your purpose in one neat package, bestowed on you for your personal qualities. The right thing to do.
It's a shame they don't draft younger, he thinks. Because five years back he maybe still believed some of this. But now? Now he's grown, and knows what he wants out of life, and it is not this.
*
"Jensen?" his mom was pleased. "We have new neighbours. A perfectly lovely Demeter! She has lots and lots of kids. Maybe you can make a friend?"
He was confused; remembered how she'd whispered to her Athena friends at the Pantheon, about how she didn't like to mix with Demeters. With breeders. ("Who knows where they've been, or what they've bred with?") But then their last new neighbour turned out to be an Aphrodite, and what with that and a Dionysos three doors down, things got pretty hairy in their close. His mom's pronounced preference for a "nice quiet bookish Athena or a pair of sweet little Artemises doing their PT together" seemed like it lapsed. And Demeter Miz Padalecki was pretty great. She cooked all the time, and grew stuff in the garden, and never minded Jensen tagging along with her tribe. Eventually, he was pretty sure she had eight kids, but it took a year for him to work that out. A year of tumbling round with indeterminate numbers of older and younger, louder and quieter, and especially one his own age and weight but a head taller, his gangly counterpart and partner in crime.
Then Daphne went to drafting (an Aphrodite, it was whispered, and she’d always been too pretty to be any good), and it was only seven for a while, and next door turned pensive. But then there were new twins, and Miz P cheered right up – not so much her olders, though, or Jensen. The twins were loud, and smelly. Suddenly, Jensen's quiet little home next door became a haven for him, and for them. Well, him and Jared, really. It took a few years to stick, but by graduation time, it'd been him and Jay alone for a while. More than just a pair in a group; a pair unto themselves.
Which… it made Jensen feel weird. Pairing too soon. He hadn't drafted yet. Didn't know how he'd be allowed to mate, or hitch, or what-all. But the more time with Jared he had, the more he wanted. And seemed like Jay felt similarly. Chances weren't good they'd both be Dionysoi (Jay just might, being chthonic in nature and inheritance, but it wasn't a good percentage bet), or Ganymedes (small hope of that), with permission to hitch. And he wasn't even certain what Jay wanted and-
Which was how when their time of spring break came, Jensen was all knotted up inside. Seventeen was supposed to be all kinds of fun, but he wasn’t certain what fun was allowed to be, for him, these days.
His mom looked pursed and pinched when she waved their bus off, like maybe she knew what Jensen's hopes might be. But, everyone off for their spring tended to be a little hellbent on excitement, and Athenas never did like to see that. Miz P sent him off with a bunch of flavoured condoms and a slap on the shoulder ("Fertility is a wonderful thing, Jensen, but not just yet, you hear?"). He'd laughed, blushed, denied and mentally noted that he'd never so much as imagined getting mated with a female. Even spring hitched. So, there was that.
Sun City was so different from the real world, it took them plenty of weeks to find their own way. The blue skies and seas, the ease of life… Above all, the freedom. Nobody knew your family, so nobody knew how you'd likely draft. Jensen didn't have to think about the wars that were most probably his inheritance. He did, sometimes, of course, you couldn't help but reckon how you'd be seated, after spring was over. But his dreams weren't so filled with red, a while.
Jared loved the place, loved walking shirtless by the sea, staying up till all hours and basking in the long, long days and the blue, blue skies. “If only the world was like this,” he’d say, and Jensen would nod. Thinking that him and Jay together was the thing, and blood skies wouldn’t be too high a price for it.
Spring Break meant hitching, too, if they chose. A freedom they’d never had before nor would again, but Jensen couldn’t settle to it, and seemed like Jared couldn’t settle either: not long enough to pick a girl. He danced down the sidewalks after wiggling behinds a time or ten, often talking pretty with a whole bunch of ladies, but he always came back to their small apartment. Bunked in with Jensen, two singles and barely sufficient floorspace to place four feet on the ground, so Jensen was pretty sure nothing came of those swift, smiling encounters but good cheer.
So, he had learned to hope. More, as spring break’s long months started to tick down into countable weeks, and Jared’s look became guarded. More still, the night before they had to return home, when Jared said, “Jen? I just- I have to-“
The brush of mouth on mouth had Jensen gasping, reaching for more, dying for touch. Which was how they spent their last free night, in the one small bed, learning each other’s bodies and needs, apologising for wasted time, sharing hopes for the future, for what might be, after the draft.
But, in the morning, they had known it would most likely never be.
*
Jensen drafts early. With a name like Ackles, you got to expect it.
He goes for Ares. Can’t pretend it’s a surprise or even a sorrow, really. The borders must be defended. And soldiers have a fair amount of latitude between campaigns. If Jared comes too, maybe they can make something of it. (If they live, of course. He’s not sorrowful, but he sure as hell is scared, and that’s only reasonable. Plenty of Ares are drafted, cuz plenty of Ares won’t live past their rookie year.)
One good thing about drafting for Ares is you stick around a long while. Maybe one in five go for soldiers, so Jensen’s new unit mates are kept sitting on the benches as draft passes draft. The Irises fill their quota when the surnames are still in the Fs, three pretty girls running off to learn to run about for rich dudes in their palaces. No one he knows, but there’s a girl who drafts under K who was looking after her friend the whole time the Irises were led away. (She drafts to Hestia, so she’ll drudge away silently till her early grave. Unless she gets a freakishly unlikely assignment to tend the grates of her friend’s palace, they’ll never meet again.)
The benches near him are swollen with the warrior boys and girls, Ares and Artemis all the way. The other side of the stadium, it’s all Aphrodites and Demeters in one rank, ripe girls with broad hips or big boobs, and a future of fucking for fertility or surcease. Hephaestuses are recruiting a lot, too. Must be that the big strike on Region Nine did as much damage to the manufacturing industries as they’d heard. That wouldn’t be so bad. Jay’s not very handy but he’s strong and willing. And many an Ares has a longterm link to his smith-armourer… Okay, it’s not the licensed liaison of the Dionysians, but it’d be something.
They’re into the Os, now. A small group, and going about where you’d expect, save for a single quiet gal who goes for a Hera, to everyone’s amazement.
A guy behind Jensen whispers, “Don’t look so queenly to me,” as she’s led away – the only Hera of her draft, and about to live a life no normal mortal can fully imagine.
Three drafts later, something happens. The sky darkens, seems like, and a man Jensen had not noticed among the drafter actives strides to the podium. “I call craven,” he hollers, filling the stadium. “I was promised five, and I have not even one.”
“You will have your five,” says the Red Athena conducting the draft, calm and authoritative as her role should be. “You will-“
“I will have the five next, and damn your eyes,” says the man. He’s big, blackened of skin not by nature but by some artificial means. Like axel grease and soot, so little patches of his bared pelt stand out white and smooth. Some of the darkness in his skin is scarring, scarring imbued with the dark matter that spatters him, blued lumps and bulges of distortion.
Jensen’s early draft put him at the start of their benches, close to the Artemis lines. It’s from that side he hears the whisper of, “Oh Zeus… Oh holy Zeus… It’s a Titan year.”
The whisper ripples like chills around Jensen’s compatriots. A Titan year. Extirpation of the nation’s sins required. Nobody knows in advance when such will be called, but there is no gainsaying the call of sacrifice. It’s rare. Rare enough Jensen never counted it in his manifold fears for their future.
The Athena says, “That is not the regular-“ But the Titan is in her face, grunting threats, and she sighs. “Well. It hardly matters the personal qualities of the extirpators. Unless anyone wants to speak up and claim them, you may have your next five. But-“ a warning finger waggle “-You will tell us their fate before they are taken.”
Jared is third in line to be drafted, and Jensen watches him count, and realise he is lost. It’s not quite certain, there could be a counter-claim from one of the factions. And there is, but it’s for the lithe boy fourth in line, a singer who goes for Apollo with a derisive, uncaring snort from the Titan. The sixth in line is a girl who the Titan says will become a Tantalus, and who starts to scream as soon as she realises where she is placed. Jared doesn’t scream. He hears the fate of the Atlas before him with barely a flicker. And then his own.
Prometheus. He will serve his twenty years as their Prometheus. For their sins. If he lives so long.
He bows. But Jensen can see the knotted tension of his own body in every line of Jared’s. Neck straining, hands clasped so hard the knuckles whiten. But he’ll do it. The draft is for the good of them all. Jensen has never been prouder to know him. And yet, the horror of it.
Jensen’s shout won’t be suppressed and he never regrets it, though it gains him a beating and the lowest grunt berth in his cohort for six months after this day. “Jay, Jay, it’ll be okay. I’m coming for you.” It gains him, also, one long look at Jared’s face, one exchange of glances, and that is worth the rest.
*
It takes near on ten of those twenty years, but Jensen finds his way. He’s not a bad soldier, despite the start, and given time, he rises far enough to hear some stuff. About other campaigns than his sandy, sunbeaten one. About the mountains, and the Titans, and the blood altars, and the sacrifices that are never enough.
Given more time, he transfers from his elite unit to one working more in the high places. And, given another two years of hard fighting, putting himself in the thick of anything that’s going, eventually, he gets sent into the mountains of the north.
He guesses they have no reason to suspect his loyalty. He’s been a good soldier a long time. A few disciplinary issues when he’s been too long without release, and some jealous colleague reported him for fumbling with a willing cohort. But no more than that. And that, in a soldier, is scarcely seen as weakness.
Two days into Jensen’s mountain mission, he simply walks away from it all.
He has no illusion about how easy this will come. Although nobody questions his leaving camp for a piss in the dark of night, someone will note before daybreak that he never came back. And his light pack is gone, though that could be habit; few soldiers leave their gear at the mercy of others. He kicks a skid into the edge of their ice shelf, scatters a couple pieces of non-essential equipment at and over the edge. A careless scout would draw obvious, tragic conclusions. But this unit doesn’t have careless scouts. So he spends a while laying false trails, walking back over himself – and over the other guys, standard army boots be blessed.
Then he makes for Tartarus.
It wasn’t hard to know the general direction he wanted. Tartarus is more than myth, a dark tale to share for those who love dark tales. Of whom, in the army, there is no shortage. Besides, all places of sacrifice must be serviced, as much as any camp, and any city, so there are people, Hestias all, who know and will share the knowledge for a little flirtation, a mite of army rations, a hand with their burdens from an Ares on leave. Jensen has made it a practice to accumulate such. He has weeded Lethe from Acheron from Styx, sifting and measuring what scraps he had till he knew he was on Jared’s trail. Tartarus is the bloodiest of the Titan holds. Not one to go unnoticed.
Yesterday, before the unit dropped for the night, they passed the gateway. Jensen hasn’t hesitated since.
It takes half a night, but eventually he gets to see the watch fires banked and glowing as the last guards of Tartarus wait to greet the dawn. He watches a ways, but there’s no fancy tricks here, no expectation of assault. Jensen may very well be the first person voluntarily to enter Tartarus without an order.
He spends the dawn in a high place, spying out the land, watching lest his unit trace him back. And, sure enough, not so long after reveille, there’s a scouting party looking for him. And not finding him. The placidly unalarmed state of the place tells its own tale. A lie, of course, but tales are often that. Jensen can hope, but not expect, that when he does make a move these dullards can spot, they may not think to call back the army that was so close the day before.
The next night, come dawnwards, after the shortest nap he can manage and still function, Jensen eels into the camp that is Tartarus. All cold, all dark. But not silent. There are commands, and screams, and swearing and blows. The snow scuffed and muddied all about, and in places and patches darkened with something redder and richer. Jared’s not the only sacrifice here, giving his lifeblood for the good of the nation.
He finds two others, before Jared. And then, he’s unmistakable, even in the low light. Those long limbs have gained flesh despite his predicament. He must exercise at night in the sheds; where the bulk of the shouting came from. His arms are twisted, contorted around the rock to which he is chained. Legs bent too, cramped up from his place on the sacrifice stone. But Jared’s not feeling discomfort. He is stone cold. Bone cold. The warmth of Jared’s body, so well-recalled across the years, is gone. He is grey and still. The bloody gouge in his side is what you expect, when you go seeking to free Prometheus, and delay too long. Jensen never saw the eagle, pecking out Jared’s lifeblood. But the evidence is here that he’s come too late.
Jensen says, “Jay? I came for you. You did your duty, baby. You did it, and it’s time to say fuck this and find your own way.”
Jared says nothing. Corpses are like that.
“I’m coming back tonight,” Jensen says. “You be ready.”
Jared lolls back on his rock, silent and still. Jensen bites back more unmanly words. He needs to play his part. Has to believe that Prometheus does what the myth says. That he dies and lives and dies again. To pay for their sins. All sins.
What idiot thought Jared oughta pay for all their sins? Jensen’s barely known him ever commit any.
He returns to his hideyhole, angrier than ever, and scared to hell about what he’ll find tomorrow. An empty rock? A pissed guardian writing a note they’ll be needing a new Prometheus cuz the old one gave it up too soon? Or the gods playing true, and giving Prometheus life again?
He’s gotten by on too little rest for too long, and army habits make him get six hours shuteye this time. Being an Ares teaches you a lot; some of it useful even for the rest of humanity. And he’s ready by noon, to watch the way the day really takes shape. Sees the exterpators walking in the yard, taking air, bulking muscles. It’s important they be healthy, to be a fitting sacrifice. And he sees them shuffled off to their torments too, the routine of pain and screaming that makes this place the darkest in the nation. At least Prometheus’s pain is a fast thing. Imagine being tortured twelve hours in the day, given three hours surcease, nine hours drugged sleep, and round again. Some people here have that. Gods forgive the nation for what it does.
He sees Jared, maybe. A guy that tall, for sure, and laughing with the guardians. Could you laugh, with the guys who nightly chain you to a rock to die in blood and pain? Ignoring their weapons and mission to keep you dying? Jensen’s coldly certain he couldn’t. But Jared never learned to gut a man with twine and twigs, and likely it’s never occurred to him to do so, being an accepting type. A little of Jensen’s fear drizzles away. If any man could laugh with his torturers, he reckons Jared could. So that could be his Jared. And his Jared may still, underneath it all, be the man Jensen could have loved.
So it’s all worthwhile.
*
It’s the deadest of night when Jensen returns to the place of sacrifice. Seems like Jared dies with the first fingers of dawn, and comes back to himself somewhere around noon. The afternoon is his rec time, meals and running and even time to sit and read a mythology or two, looks like. There’s a small part of Jensen that reckons this gig isn’t so bad, looking back on ten years of Ares’ military rations and leave that never comes through. A few friendly guards, an hour of discomfort then pain, and living high on the hog otherwise, with the best of care and a lot of folks invested that you don’t die for keeps.
But he watches while those same guardians put a sweet-looking girl screaming into a firepit and stoke it till she kindles, and reconsiders. Doing that more’n once would about finish him. Doing it for decades would-
Which is maybe why he’s a little previous landing up by Jared’s rock. The chains are on, but the guards aren’t hardly gone, and dawn is an hour or more off. Jared looks pained, sinews standing out harsh where he’s twisted around his mooring point. But he’s alive. Jensen can almost hear the heartbeat, he’s so alive.
“Jay,” he says, stumbling the syllable in his haste.
Jared rolls his head awkwardly against the rock, wincing as his skull scrapes. “Who-“
There’s a moment when Jensen is so sure this is all over. That Jared’s not Jared any more. But it passes. The sacrificial victim becomes his boyhood love in one breath of recognition. “Jensen? It really was you last night? Sometimes I dream when I’m dead, but I thought you might not be a dream, maybe.”
“It’s me,” Jensen says, buoyant with joy, because he did it. He did it. “I’m real. And I came to get you out.”
Jared pauses, and there’s a frown. “What?”
“To get you out. Get you away. You don’t have to live this way, Jay. Nobody should have to. You don’t owe the nation your death.”
But there’s no answering jubilation meeting Jensen’s words. He can feel it sinking even before Jared says, “No.”
”No?” Jensen’s too loud, for a second, and Jared hisses at him for quiet. But he has to understand this, because it’s madness. Jared’s brain turned to mush, maybe, and Jensen will save him from himself.
“No. It’s too early.” Jared nods at the bare wall surround, that keeps his rocky altar apart from the rest of the torture spaces. There are scratches, pale and clear, running down one wall. Cross hatches, counting off in fives. Jensen couldn’t begin to count them in this moment, in this light, but he’d bet there’s around 3600 of them. One for every death. And plenty more space for more scratches, down to a big red X lower on the wall. An X symbolising Jared’s last sacrifice, most like. Jared’s still talking. “I was chosen. I have a duty. I have twenty years to serve, and you can’t take me before I’m done.”
“But why?” Jensen, whose walk away from his unit continues to cause him absolutely zero pangs, can’t see any reason for this hesitance.
“Because if I go, the sacrifices aren’t made,” Jared says. “And I won’t do that to our people.”
Jensen argues, of course he does. Argues till he’s hoarse, and Jared’s restive. Argues till the eagle flies down, and lands upon Jared’s rock, and Jared twists obedient to allow himself to be devoured right neatly. He screams, when the worst of the beak punches through his tenderest parts, but he doesn’t complain.
Jensen leaves before the guardians come to fetch the corpse. He has thinking to do.
*
See, Jensen understands where Jared’s getting this. He’s a nicer man than Jensen, always was, and neither of them questioned aloud how things should be, so likely Jared hasn’t had questions running through his head ever since their spring break. Anyone who can survive a decade as a human sacrifice and still believe in the gods is evidently more of a believer than Jensen ever has been. Jared’s not in such a very bad place, maybe, if he’s accepting his deaths as meaningful. Maybe Jensen should leave him here.
But there’s another part of Jensen – call it a selfish part – that thinks Jared’s place isn’t loneliness and sacrifice. That even if he’s not been pining for Jensen all this long time, he doesn’t deserve the randomness of the fate that selected him for Prometheus duty. And that part of Jensen remembers the way Jared screams, and the way the eagle paused to peck at his dead eyeball, and reckons that mythmaking should stay in the books where it hurts nobody’s flesh and blood. That part of Jensen is leaving no man behind.
He’s ready, the next night. Jared greets him warmly enough, that wide smile that’s haunted Jensen’s dreams for more than a decade. He says, straight off, “I’m not coming with you, Jensen.” But he’s not howling for the guardians or cussing out his old friend for persevering.
Jensen says, “That’s okay. If you’re surer than sure, I guess that’s you decided. It’s not my choice to make, though I hope you won’t be ratting me out any time soon if I hang here. I like spending time with you.”
“Never,” says Jared, simple and clear and meaning both syllables, far as Jensen can judge.
So he’s emboldened to try his alternative. “But- Jay, you ever think how they didn’t debate us religion in school? We learned the myths, and we learned the duties, but no one ever told us other views.”
“That’s cuz it’s the truth,” says Jared, all simple and sweet.
“Maybe.” Jensen scratches his nose. “You ever think how they didn’t tell us about the enemy, neither?”
“What enemy?” Jared blinks. It’s a long time since he was out in the world, of course. Jensen shouldn’t be surprised he won’t think like a soldier.
“The enemy why we need all the armies and the draft and all,” Jensen says. “The enemy why our whole nation’s lives are ruled by what the Great Gods say, and what goes down in Pantheon. Cuz I’ve met some of them, Jay, and- They’re just people.”
Jared doesn’t want to hear it, so it takes a while of to and fro before Jensen gets to say, “Been a soldier ten years, Jay. I’ve been south, and the enemy there says there’s just the one god, and no other, and he died on a tree and lives in the sky. Been west, where they say god is in all the trees and the rivers and the animals and not just the sky and the high places. And I’ve been north, where the enemy says there’s lots of gods, or lots of ideas of god, or maybe no god at all. And anyone can worship how and where they please, or not worship if they have no god. And seems like none of those nations is gettin’ smited too hard, Jay. I’m damn sure they got no guys chained to rocks for eagles to peck out their livers, but they’re doing okay. Beating us, often as not. I don’t think the myth is true, Jay. I don’t think any of it is true, or matters.”
Jared closes his eyes, shakes his head as hard as he can in his constrained position, and says nothing. Jensen reads him as confused, scared, wanting to deny, but knowing Jensen has experiences Jared can’t imagine. It’s a crack in his certainty Jensen wants to lean on, to widen, but his business here isn’t taking the unwilling away from their lives. So he says, “You want to think on it some?”
The nod in return is small, but Jensen accepts it. “You want me to stay till the eagle?”
Maybe he’s too obvious that it hurts him to watch Jared hurting. Or maybe it’s real, when Jared says, “No. It’s better when nobody watches.”
Jensen says, low and loving, “I’ll come back for you.” And dares a kiss on Jared’s cheek.
*
He comes back. And back.
The first week, he thinks it’ll be fast. The second, he knows it’ll be slow. His scavenging in the mountains becomes more intensive. Not a handful of berries and one incautious fish. He snares and traps, guts and cooks.
It’s a bad way of living, but it’s freedom. He never knew till now how much he needed that. Knew his hatred of the gods stemmed from what the system did to Jared; but it’s deeper than that. He hates what it does to everyone. Jensen never would have been an Ares, given any choice, and no matter that he was a good one. He can’t quite imagine what he would have done, but something of his own, for sure.
He read, over the years, a whole bunch of forbidden literature about the other places. The places where the Olympians don’t hold sway, or their power ended long ago. Or, up north, where they’re tolerated with street temples alongside the southern god’s churches, and strange religions from lands that don’t touch this place.
Overseas used to be Jensen’s goal, to some place where they can’t be touched. But he never found read of a place that seemed untouchable by the nation, and distance makes no matter. So now he thinks, talks to Jared, about heading north. Because it’s the freedom he needs. Jared can worship, if he cares to, but Jensen’s had a bellyful and knows he needs no more. He talks to Jared as much as he can, about those other places, about how things could be different. About how those other nations hold theirs in abhorrence, for their perversion of religion and their enslavement of their own peoples.
About how, eventually, Jensen’s not sure what came first: the gods or the war, and what reinforces what. It’s all of a piece, this crazy nation of theirs. And it wasn’t till the draft, till Jared, that Jensen ever truly questioned it. Since then, he has cared for little else.
Three weeks in, and Jared’s begun persuading Jensen to leave. “You can’t live in the mountains for ten years, Jen. You need to get clear. Find a place they won’t find you.”
Jensen’s answer, always, is, “I’m goin’ nowhere without you.” Every time, Jared sighs, and turns his head away. But Jensen thinks maybe he’s still listening.
He knows it, in fact for four weeks and more in, Jared says, “If I left-“ and Jensen’s heart about jumps up into his throat, because if is not never.
“Yeah?” he says, gently. Encouraging.
“I can’t leave the others. Allie and Max and-“ Allie’s the girl that burns. Jensen’s been thinking about her a bunch too. Anyone would, the way she screams.
They talk it out, week on week, in the precious hour they can manage together. Setting the others free, or those that are unguarded at the moment when Jared makes his move. For they can’t take everyone. And then, what of the risks, of capture, of betrayal? Jared didn’t shout for his guardians when Jensen first came, but only out of their old love, Jensen knows it now. He believed, truly, that his work here is important. That he’s now contemplating leaving means, maybe, that there’s a chink in his beliefs. But that’s come from Jensen’s hard arguing over weeks, and their old trust too, working away at Jared’s certainty. No one else they might take would have that link.
In the end, they leave it that they’ll try to take Allie as they go. She’s been here longest, and hurts most, and Jared knows her well, for her pains come just an hour before his own so they spend a lot of recreation hours together. (There’s a message there Jensen will always regret not attending to, but they pass over it in excitement as Jared turns from ‘if’ to ‘when’, as another week passes.)
It’s forty days in Jensen’s personal wilderness when Jared finally says, “Yes, tomorrow. Do it. We run. We run north.”
It’s the first time Jared has said all of that. The first time he’s sounded urgent. Jensen wants to spring him right there, but it’s not the moment for impulse. He leaves Jared to the eagle one last time. Listens to his screams one last time. And packs up camp, gets his shuteye, and prepares to take his love away from hell.
One last time creeping into the camp. Jensen’s confident now. He knows the guard rituals, knows who is on when, knows the excitement of his own escape has long since left the mountain areas. Jared’s intransigence has made it much simpler to make this part of the escape, much though Jensen wishes it could have been speeded. They won’t be tracked by experts from the start, and that has to help them.
Freeing Jared isn’t hard. Jensen lifted the spare key a month back, and still no one has noted it. The guardians are a dozy bunch, reliant on their isolation and their guns. And the complaisance of their inmates, in truth, supportive of their own ghastly captivity. When the chains come off, Jared sits on his rock still a moment, confused. “I- I never expected it to end this way.” His voice is soft, reminiscent. He looks at the wall, a little fuller now, where his deaths are recorded. And then he stands, sure and ready. “Let’s go.”
They move silently to Allie’s cell, where she should be sleeping off the pains of the night. And she is. But- Jensen can smell it before he sees. She burns. She is burned. She isn’t healed yet.
Jared looks at the figure on the bed, comatose and still whimpering. He tears up, but he knows it before Jensen says it. “We can’t take her like this. She’ll die. And we can’t wait-“
For Jensen can deny their gods all he pleases, but it’s only supernatural agency that allows the sacrifices to die and die again. And Allie is nine parts dead right now, and in no wise able to move. They should have known it. But there’s not a damn thing they can do for her now.
Jared’s looking around the whole time they leave Tartarus. Partly for guardians, likely, but also for opportunities. To take someone with them, to salvage something of this part of his life. To not be the only one who runs, Jensen fears. But he has his own priorities, and Jared is all of them. He gets them out the perimeter and into the forest before the eagle comes. But its screams then wake the camp entirely, and there are shouts, shots and dogs on their trail soon enough. Shaken soon enough, too, because you don’t catch an Ares with elite training that quick.
The eagle follows them awhile, but it can’t penetrate the thick woods, and it must be linked to the Titans’ camp, for they don’t see it long. Jensen has to hope its magic don’t extend to too much communication with humans, but no one seems to pick up their winding, deliberately-illogical trail.
It’s a long walk north, and Jared’s no woodsman, lord knows. But Jensen has plans. And he’s telling Jared them all the time, and Jared’s drinking them in. The north, freedom and-
“And we come back,” says Jared, sure and certain, one night when he walked so hard his feet are about ready to rot, and Jensen is half crazy with worry about tomorrow and if they should lay up a while to let him heal or press on cuz freedom is bare days away. He’s sure he misheard, but Jared looks calm, like he said exactly what he meant.
“What?” is all Jensen has.
“You came for me,” says Jared. “So we come for them. Or, more like, we fight for everyone. Because this isn’t right.”
Turns out, Jared’s been listening while Jensen talked, and he’s had his own mind working on the issue. Jensen thinks small, of the ones he loves. Jared thinks big. Jared wants to save everyone.
“Of course you do,” says Jensen, helpless with love. Because of course Jared does. That’s his beloved.
It’s impossible, of course it is. But he’s filled with the need to try. To make this matter to more than them. “One thing at a time, though, babe. Across the border first.”
“Sure, babe,” says Jared, mocking and loving all at once. And, for the first time in ten years, he leans over to put his mouth on Jensen’s in love and freedom.
Ten years of fear unknots with that. Jensen thought he knew that if he could find Jared, they could start again this way. That it hadn’t just been spring break and heady teenage wanting. But nothing of that has passed between them till now. Too much blood, too much pain and duty, too many plans and theologies and practicalities in the way. But here, in this muddy hole in the northern forests, with a pine branch sticking in his shoulder and the knowledge they shouldn’t go too far for fear of attracting bears – here, he can believe that they have something for the future too.
He peels them apart, eventually, reluctantly, and mentions the bear situation. “Well, we have to go faster,” Jared says, laughing out loud like the warm, embracing kid Jensen once knew. “Now I got you back, I want more.”
Which, coincidentally, is just how Jensen thinks, reasonable care of Jared’s poor sore feet notwithstanding. He hurls a laugh into the skies, and tries to believe they’ll make the border, and beyond. They’ve come so far already. And tonight, he feels unstoppable.
***
There’s a red sky in the south, to Jensen’s eyes. He shivers and looks away. Jared sighs, and makes sure to pull the drapes tight.
“They’re doin’ it again,” says Jensen, voice low. It’s that time of year. All those young lives being turned from freedom to servitude, of whatever type they are assigned. By a system Jensen no longer believes has a heart of truth and godhood.
“Course they are.” Jared’s always been simple, this way. They never did pretend they could change the world entire, and their old homeland won’t change without a continent-quake the like of which two simple runaways can’t stimulate, no matter how many political ears they bend and arms they twist to get their movement going up here in the free north. “But we do what we can.”
There’s a thud overhead, and a yowl of complaint, and a girl’s voice hollering sensible to keep it down while folks get their shuteye. It’s no relaxation to hear, but it lightens Jensen’s mood. “Yeah, we do.”
This is their new reality. They and their friends rescue whomsoever they can from south of the border – and the numbers are higher than Jensen would have believed possible, when inside that monolith that was their nation – offer them safety and a bed awhile, and send them off into the rest of the world. The world where choices can be made free.
Jared’s arms come warm around him, and Jensen leans backward into the embrace. “You ever regret those years?” For Jared believed, then, but now knows he had that time robbed from him, unquestionably. That there never was meaning to his sacrifice. Could make a man bitter, were that man not Jared.
But, as ever when Jared is asked this, he shrugs, comfortable-like, and says, “I don’t like to look back. I got where I am now. Where we are now.”
Which just begs for kissing, and gets it tonight, like always.
*****