#I have a very specific aesthetic called Greek myths but put them on steampunk trains

[incandescent-eden]

[The Lyre Effect] Conversation II - Icarus and Hyacinthus

A scene because I like these side characters far too much.

Word Count: 1547

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“Elysium isn’t too much farther off,” Hyacinthus said offhandedly.

“I thought you didn’t count things like that,” said Icarus, his back to the window. “I thought you said it was hopeless to think toward Elysium, people like us.”

“Maybe I needed something to dream about. I’m tired of waking up from the same nightmare every day.”

The ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk of the train cars continued onward, the only indication they were moving at all. Circling around Elysium again and again, and never getting closer.

Icarus dug his fingernails into his thighs. Sisyphus and Tantalus had done horrible things – to be kept awake forever by their hunger, by their hopes, that was a fair punishment – but what had Icarus done beside wanting to live in the sunlight? Beyond loving someone far above him?

Hyacinthus was pallid now, but Icarus could see it as clearly as if he had known Hyacinthus in life: the youth with a confident glow, brown eyes that dared to look upon the sun and sparkle. Icarus looked to his own skin, untouched by the sun except by the drawings of suns of his own design.

“Don’t,” said Hyacinthus.

           Icarus looked up, slowly unfurling his hands. He was surprised to find them shaking. “I didn’t say anything.”

           “Don’t think too hard about it, Icarus,” Hyacinthus looked at Icarus with dull eyes, eyes that once were a warm dark brown, but now were flat and cold as the dirt of a horse’s grave. “I thought I understood gods, too, you know? But I guess none of us really do.”

The bitterness was barely detectable in his words, like sea monsters lurking beneath the calm ocean waters, a shadow barely cast as they moved. Icarus had to tread carefully - Hyacinthus lashed out as easily as the serpents that snapped their jaws at the silver fish that flashed in the sun.

“Do you think we’ll be able to do it? Get to Elysium one day?”

Hyacinthus stared through Icarus with dead eyes, toward Elysium. “I don’t know.” He kicked out, shuffling his feet along the floor. Perhaps he was retracing steps in his memory, wondering, as Icarus did, how he ended up in this situation, what he did to deserve an eternity of longing with no reward.

The air in their train car was calm as the train rumbled forward, and Icarus thought of the days in Crete when storms rolled in and the sun was far away, how the thunder shook the palaces of Minos and Icarus in them. There was a strange comfort that accompanied such storms, that as long as he was inside and away from the sea, the thunder was a friend.

He didn’t know the will of the gods, but there were times when Zeus’s thunder sounded more like laughing than yelling.

It never rained in Asphodel. Or maybe it did, and Icarus, for all his staring out of windows, could not see because the rainwater fell slick and gray, and it blended in with the monotony of everything else in Asphodel.

Looking out of windows, waiting for the sun, was a habit that was harder to break in death than in life.

Hyacinthus no longer looked in Icarus’s direction. His attention was focused on the door of their compartment.

“They won’t come back for a while, you know,” Icarus said. “I almost feel bad for Achilles and Pelides. Eurydice looked like she was going to kill them herself.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Hyacinthus snapped. There it was, the break in the calm, the fall through the air.

But the fall never came. Hyacinthus’s bite was rendered useless by the furrow of his brow, the way he avoided Icarus’s eyes.

“I never said anything about pitying you,” Icarus said.

“Good,” Hyacinthus said, with a haughty voice but deflated expression.

And around the train went again.

“I don’t think anyone could pity you, Hyacinthus.”

“Good,” Hyacinthus said again. His voice was farther away than Elysium itself. Typical Hyacinthus. Typical, self-absorbed Hyacinthus.

“You had the best life out of all of us.”

Hyacinthus scoffed. “Ariadne was a princess. Hard to beat that.”

“Ariadne had a mortal lover who left her to rot on an island hated by her family.”

“Did you hate her?”

“I wasn’t her family.”

“Do you hate me?” Hyacinthus shot the question before Icarus had finished the sentence.

The train crashed against the tracks violently, like cold waves that crashed against ankles and brought a person down. Clank, clank, clank, the sound drowned the cars.

Hate was a strong word. Icarus told Hyacinthus so.

“But you dislike me,” Hyacinthus pushed, his pink lips curving into a bow. Like a bow, that smile was sleek and dangerous, a smile that could easily draw blood wielded by a master hunter.

“I don’t like you,” Icarus said slowly. “We’ve been over this. Many times, in fact.”

“Why do you hate me so much, Icarus?” The arrow flew. The bow snapped. Hyacinthus’s smile dropped back into a blank expression, like he didn’t have the energy to hold it back any longer.

“I don’t hate you,” Icarus said. “I just don’t like you. You’ve had everything, you had two gods who were in love with you, and you laud that over the rest of us.”

The anger rose in him when Hyacinthus didn’t react. Icarus kept talking, the words flying out one after another in a quivering voice. Hyacinthus was not the only one whose words could pierce flesh. “Eurydice tolerates you, Achilles couldn’t care less, and Hylas and Ariadne are too nice and won’t say anything, but I’ve known too many men who think they’re better just because they were blessed by gods, and not a single one of them has been any more than a man himself.”

“I know that.”

Icarus stopped short, shocked out of his tirade by Hyacinthus’s mournful whisper. He had expected a biting remark, a smirk, condescension.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that, right?” Hyacinthus said, louder this time. “I wouldn’t be stuck on this train, going around forever, forced to remember everything I had and knowing I’ll never see it again if I didn’t know that.”

“Sometimes, I wonder what I did to deserve this. I know I should be grateful it’s Asphodel and not the Fields of Punishment, but… I don’t know. It feels like torture. I guess I got cocky,” he laughed slightly, running a hand through his hair. “I guess I thought if I could play two gods off of each other, I might end up better off either way. But who knows how gods work?”

“That was your mistake,” Icarus said stiffly.

“Do you hate me?”

The non-sequitur puzzled Icarus; annoyed him, even. “I already said I don’t hate you.”

“Then you’re a better man than I am. Or maybe a bigger fool,” Hyacinthus admitted. Then, perhaps regretting his confession, “But if you tell any of the others I said that, I will kill you again myself.”

“They wouldn’t believe me,” Icarus said, stretching his neck to the side. That was the thing about Asphodel. It was comfortable enough, but never quite enough that he forgot he was in Asphodel. Not torture, but the mild unpleasantness of the mundane.

“Besides, it was a silly thing to do, play two gods off of each other. You know how the gods feel about hubris.”

“Your lack of self-awareness is astounding,” Hyacinthus spat. He looked down at his feet, rubbing his temple. “Would it help if I said I really did love both of them?”

“No,” Icarus replied, because it wouldn’t. “But you’re here now, so no use dwelling over it.”

No reply from Hyacinthus.

“Stop rubbing at your scar,” Icarus rebuked him. “You’ll end up opening a fresh wound.”

“It’s not like it matters,” Hyacinthus said, pressing harder, no doubt to spite Icarus.

“It does! It’ll be bloody and you’ll get infected and it will look horrible, and I’m already stuck here with your face all day, I don’t want to look at an infected wound!”

“So you stare at my face all day?” Hyacinthus dropped his hand in his lap, his smile returning.

“No.” Icarus crossed his arms. He stared at Hyacinthus head on, ironically, at his face. If he looked away now, he would only be losing the challenge Hyacinthus posed.

“I’m very beautiful, you know,” Hyacinthus goaded.

Icarus rolled his eyes. “Maybe for the rear end of a centaur.”

Hyacinthus mockingly blew him a kiss. “You’d be lucky if the rear end of a centaur showed you this much affection.”

Icarus only scowled.

Leaning back in his seat, Hyacinthus relaxed. He broke their gaze first. “Icarus,” he said, directing his words to the door, where their friends still had not returned. “Thank you for not hating me. But -”

“I won’t tell,” Icarus promised.

Hyacinthus nodded, head still turned toward the door.

Icarus cleared his throat. “Thank you, too.”

Hyacinthus’s profile made a puzzled expression.

“Just. Thank you,” Icarus said. Hyacinthus didn’t need to know the reason. “I think we’re going to reach Elysium soon.”

Icarus turned back to his own window, watching the island flash past, as far away as it had always been, and surely always would be.

From behind him, he heard, “Yeah. I think we will.”

#writing #fictional writing #greek myth retelling #I have a very specific aesthetic called Greek myths but put them on steampunk trains #you know the one #hycarus was a mistake #reevie writes #original story #the lyre effect #there is never chronology or canon in tle honestly lol #perhaps one day! but not today :))