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Description
Just how far the east is from the west just how far-

Arise was curled up in an overstuffed armchair, his pen faintly scratching beneath the heavy chords pounding in his ears. He was only on the second paragraph of the essay, and, unlike normally, the endless playlists weren't helping much with his concentration. There was everything from old time jazz to pseudo-Christian heavy metal to Latin rap to French lullabies. An old gift from one of the many summers before the war, full of Apollo's sun.

He still felt uncomfortable if he thought too hard about it. Father now but brother once, not just Paul, Mel's boyfriend from up north, but Apollo, god on the Greek pantheon, from high on Olympus - his own true home, his alma mater, mother of his soul. It had been almost three years since the lies had been peeled away one by one, and the entire world had come crashing down around his ears.

And now here they were, not quite back to ordinary life, and he had to try and scribble something down for an English final while a certain trickster god stared him down from the other side of the room. He'd been offering steady criticism for the past half hour.

Your penmanship is terrible. Loki noted. It's not even script.

The headphones didn't seem to help, either - the sharp voice cut straight through into his head. It was probably because of the scars, he figured. He recalled that from the old days, the way that they acted, binding them together, in both spirit and body. Useful, sometimes, but just annoying today.

I can think of a million more interesting things to do on a weekend.

Ari bowed his head to the paper, cranking up the volume. The song transitioned, this time to alternative rock with a throbbing chorus. That lasted him a few more halting sentences on Hawthorne's symbolism. He had a feeling that he was missing something. He'd already gotten the part about the letter, that was obvious but.... Maybe it was something about fairies? No, that couldn't be right.

That topic is lame. Haven't you had enough tragedy in your lifetime?

He paused and tried to remember some of the important scenes, mentally flipping through the pages of the book, thinking back. He didn't have it with him - left it on the school roof last week. It had been about to rain, and he'd just forgotten it there in his hurry. Completely ruined, he was sure. Not that he'd bothered to check.

The witch would be horrified. No Aristotle? What are they teaching in schools these days? So many lies, so little time.

He wished he had it now, though. He knew about the style, the dense prose and flowing, almost lurid, poetry, all wrapped together in one, and he had read about Hester and Roger and the preacher and the kid, more or less, but some of the details escaped him. Like this symbolism stuff.

Too bad blondie isn't here to be your brain, Loki inserted snidely.

The pen nearly punched through the paper with that last remark. Ari ripped out his headphones and glared at him. "What the hell, Loki?" he demanded. "Could you shut up for five minutes and let me get done with this crap?!"

The god just looked smug and folded his arms across his chest, blinking slowly. This was much more interesting than watching him trying to think. His long dark leather coat cast deeper shadows around where he sat, giving the impression that he had come from somewhere else, something less mundane than a lounge or a house or a kitchen. Not really, no. The words filtered easily through Ari's mind without even bothering to be raised a decibel above his ranting. But Loki had always been calm and composed.

"What are you even doing here?" the boy continued irately, rolling the pen through his fingers - still wrapped up to the knuckles with the same black linen cloth, spelled for protection. Another gift, of sorts, but the giver was long gone. His sister, the witch. Most of his family had disappeared in the wake of the war, the false war of Ragnorak, but Auguri had gone out with a bang, leaving him..... with yet more lies and confusion, this time a puzzle that neither of them could quite understand. Mysteries upon mysteries.

Healing. Del's still not tired of throwing things at me. I think one of the pillows actually left a bruise, he replied, sounding faintly amused.

Some of the anger left with that, but Ari still shot Loki one last dirty look. "You deserve it, though," he muttered, going back to his paper, the headphones dangling limply around his neck.

Loki rolled his eyes and sprawled out on the couch, the very image of sloth. A familiar grin spread itself across his thin, scarred mouth. Come on, there has to be something to do.... Sitting around is boring.

Ari scratched down another sentence and immediately crossed it out, fidgeting. This wasn't going well. Due tomorrow, too. Great, just great. He frowned, thinking it through. There was the woman, the doctor, the preacher. Oh, yes, the doctor and the the thing with the heart, and the way he pretended. That was important, right? He and the preacher together, what was it called. Something like aluminum.

A foil for a hero is better than a father.

He started at that, wondering if Loki had been in his head earlier, deeper than he suspected. "Shut up," he repeated. He might actually fail, and it was just too depressing to think about summer school. Not that he made bad grades, but exams were weighed two or three times more. He'd already made a couple of Cs this semester. Any more and he'd be screwed. Dove would probably kill him too.

Oooh, trouble in paradise? Are Romeo and Juliet squabbling already? Loki stretched out, with a catlike bonelessness, silently snickering. The dim lighting turned his skin from a golden olive to almost brown, but his eyes were as a bright as ever, an acidic lime green.

Ari flushed angrily, the laughter reverberating inside his head. Before he could stop it, sparks flew from his fingertips. The fire that always swam beneath his skin broke out into the air - engulfing his half-finished essay in the process. "Damn it, Loki!" he growled, throwing his hands in the air, flinging the ashes over the smooth wooden flooring. His hair burst into flames. Maybe his brother would shut up if his place was burned to the ground, he thought viciously.

You know, I think I liked you better as Icarion. At least he was fun.

Loki languidly rolled to his feet and moved to block Ari's way out of the room. His eyes were swirling, green and gold. "Don't do this princeling," he said smoothly, aloud. "Come with me tonight." His physical voice was more soothing and comfortable than a four chord harmony. His smile, however, had vanished. Ari froze, little flames flickering and crawling over his limbs. He couldn't think for the roaring in his ears; the fire was reflected by the shadows in his eyes.

"Let's drown our sorrows," Loki told him, persuasively. "Not waste time with fits and tempers... come with me and forget about this."

Ari refused to meet his eyes. "You'll just upchuck tomorrow," he croaked, the roar choking his voicebox.

Loki grasped him by the shoulders and steered him towards the hall. "Funny thing about mead," he said. "Nasty stuff, but it isn't bothered much by curses."

The flames died out with the touch of his skin, scars on scars. Ari's eyes were wide; his veins were buzzing. He has no idea of the time, but he wasn't sure that he cared. He was screwed either way. What did it matter, by whom, when, where? He pulled out of his brother's hands, his head beginning to spin a bit. Everything was in shades of lavender and emerald and orange.

Mmm... I heard there was a new place opening on the streets. They've even straightened up that French torchbearer.

The rest of the night was a blur. He caught moments and snippets of conversation in the rush. Laughter and dancing. All thoughts of trouble with Dove and school seemed very distant. There were stars hanging in the ceiling and the ground moved like waves under his feet. Everything was hilarious.

I don't think I should be doing this at my age, he said, dubiously.

What, at over two thousand? You're not human, Ari, and hardly American.

The place was underground. Maybe it had once been a subway, or some kind of tracks, because it rested on a gridwork of ancient steel. The lights cast an ethereal atmosphere, subtly shifting to betray the eyes. Those that were quite human came and went without a trace past the barred gates. The music was played hard and fast by nimble fingers - more or less live - the words screamed out in a tongue that he could understand. Throngs of bodies moved together and then apart with charmed grace, as if under the influence of a fairie rave.

Hands reached for him from every direction, grabbing his sleeves or twisting locks of his tousled ginger hair. There was a girl with spangled hair that reminded him of Glory, but when she turned away, he could see all of her bones jutting out from her back. Loki took hold of him and led him through the night; Ari followed unquestioningly, as he had so many times before. For once, they were of a similar mind - a desperate, roving one, all in the purpose of forgetting old memories, and yet, together, as two brothers, reliving them in the passing moments.

I don't remember. I never remembered even before... so how would I remember not remembering doing this?

In the morning, it hit him again. Dove, school, a world full of trouble. He scrambled out of bed and discovered that lines of blue Sharpie had been drawn all over his arms and legs. The dark, everpresent circles beneath his eyes had lengthened and his cheeks were flushed with hectic spots of red. He had slept, but not dreamed. He was still wearing the same old ripped jeans as the night before. It was anyone's guess as to what had happened to the rest of it.

Loki's figure appeared in the door; his features were drawn taut in a vaguely apologetic expression. "You started looking quite edible to the 'dwellers at about two in the morning," he said. "I did what I could." Ari noticed the pale violet bruises flowering over his neck and jawline. They had certainly done something, whatever it was.

Ari went to look for a shirt with long sleeves. "Oh," he mumbled. "That's nice." So they had been underdwellers: the bloodsuckers, the shapeshifters, the demons, and all else that dwelt apart, neither here nor there, every so often mingling with both gods and mortals. And that meant that they had probably been in a suburb of Hades. Another thing he didn't want to think too hard about.

He tugged on an old orange knit hoody and then went looking for his sneakers. "Going back to Del, then?" he asked. He was too foggy to be really curious, but he supposed that he ought to ask. He didn't think he'd be letting Dove see the marks. (Or Alex, for that matter.) Good boys didn't do things like this.

He poked his head out of the closet; Loki had disappeared again, without saying a word. He sighed and then spotted his shoes set on top of one of the wall shelves. He had no idea what time it was, but he was probably late, judging by the amount of light streaming through the window. He quickly laced up sneakers and darted downstairs. Time to fail, yay.

He was grabbing a slice of cold pizza when he noticed the parchment laying on the kitchen table. He sidled over and looking down at it. Loki's familiar spiky cursive scrolled down the entire length in a devoted transcription of the Lorem Ipsum. The black ink was as iridescent as a beetle's shell. His brow furrowed as he twisted his head to the side, trying to see if the Latin meant anything more. It was the default text for practically everything, and it didn't make much sense for Loki to have copied it out at random, especially not by hand. He had never been the industrious type.

I owe you one, the thought came.

As soon as Arise reached for it, the parchment began to change, the ink spreading and the texture distorting at a touch, becoming what seemed like any few stray pages of paper. A second later, he held his essay in his hand - or at least the first half was his. The rest seemed enough alike, even in his own handwriting, but it strung together his ideas in a way that made him look almost brilliant. Yet they were things that had hung at the tip of his tongue and lurked ungrasped in the back of his head. Things about philosophy and mythology and tragedy that applied almost as much to him as to a fictional Puritan minister. Matters of the heart.

He hesitated, wondering again how much of his thoughts were really his own. On the other hand, Loki had plenty of reasons to be contrite, even sincerely so. After all, they were brothers, right? And he really, really didn't want to admit that he'd failed English class to his girlfriend's face. He was already enough of an idiot.

He slipped the papers in his back pocket, grabbed his skateboard, and then made his way out the door. It still wasn't like Loki to do something respectable, or honorable, or even nice, but... He'd take what he could today, and just try to ignore the deep suspicions beginning to brew.

I have other plans for this summer. Big plans. He could hear the smirk in his brother's voice, as if it was a visible thing; however, Arise did his best to shrug it off as nothing.

Description
Just how far the east is from the west just how far-

Arise was curled up in an overstuffed armchair, his pen faintly scratching beneath the heavy chords pounding in his ears. He was only on the second paragraph of the essay, and, unlike normally, the endless playlists weren't helping much with his concentration. There was everything from old time jazz to pseudo-Christian heavy metal to Latin rap to French lullabies. An old gift from one of the many summers before the war, full of Apollo's sun.

He still felt uncomfortable if he thought too hard about it. Father now but brother once, not just Paul, Mel's boyfriend from up north, but Apollo, god on the Greek pantheon, from high on Olympus - his own true home, his alma mater, mother of his soul. It had been almost three years since the lies had been peeled away one by one, and the entire world had come crashing down around his ears.

And now here they were, not quite back to ordinary life, and he had to try and scribble something down for an English final while a certain trickster god stared him down from the other side of the room. He'd been offering steady criticism for the past half hour.

Your penmanship is terrible. Loki noted. It's not even script.

The headphones didn't seem to help, either - the sharp voice cut straight through into his head. It was probably because of the scars, he figured. He recalled that from the old days, the way that they acted, binding them together, in both spirit and body. Useful, sometimes, but just annoying today.

I can think of a million more interesting things to do on a weekend.

Ari bowed his head to the paper, cranking up the volume. The song transitioned, this time to alternative rock with a throbbing chorus. That lasted him a few more halting sentences on Hawthorne's symbolism. He had a feeling that he was missing something. He'd already gotten the part about the letter, that was obvious but.... Maybe it was something about fairies? No, that couldn't be right.

That topic is lame. Haven't you had enough tragedy in your lifetime?

He paused and tried to remember some of the important scenes, mentally flipping through the pages of the book, thinking back. He didn't have it with him - left it on the school roof last week. It had been about to rain, and he'd just forgotten it there in his hurry. Completely ruined, he was sure. Not that he'd bothered to check.

The witch would be horrified. No Aristotle? What are they teaching in schools these days? So many lies, so little time.

He wished he had it now, though. He knew about the style, the dense prose and flowing, almost lurid, poetry, all wrapped together in one, and he had read about Hester and Roger and the preacher and the kid, more or less, but some of the details escaped him. Like this symbolism stuff.

Too bad blondie isn't here to be your brain, Loki inserted snidely.

The pen nearly punched through the paper with that last remark. Ari ripped out his headphones and glared at him. "What the hell, Loki?" he demanded. "Could you shut up for five minutes and let me get done with this crap?!"

The god just looked smug and folded his arms across his chest, blinking slowly. This was much more interesting than watching him trying to think. His long dark leather coat cast deeper shadows around where he sat, giving the impression that he had come from somewhere else, something less mundane than a lounge or a house or a kitchen. Not really, no. The words filtered easily through Ari's mind without even bothering to be raised a decibel above his ranting. But Loki had always been calm and composed.

"What are you even doing here?" the boy continued irately, rolling the pen through his fingers - still wrapped up to the knuckles with the same black linen cloth, spelled for protection. Another gift, of sorts, but the giver was long gone. His sister, the witch. Most of his family had disappeared in the wake of the war, the false war of Ragnorak, but Auguri had gone out with a bang, leaving him..... with yet more lies and confusion, this time a puzzle that neither of them could quite understand. Mysteries upon mysteries.

Healing. Del's still not tired of throwing things at me. I think one of the pillows actually left a bruise, he replied, sounding faintly amused.

Some of the anger left with that, but Ari still shot Loki one last dirty look. "You deserve it, though," he muttered, going back to his paper, the headphones dangling limply around his neck.

Loki rolled his eyes and sprawled out on the couch, the very image of sloth. A familiar grin spread itself across his thin, scarred mouth. Come on, there has to be something to do.... Sitting around is boring.

Ari scratched down another sentence and immediately crossed it out, fidgeting. This wasn't going well. Due tomorrow, too. Great, just great. He frowned, thinking it through. There was the woman, the doctor, the preacher. Oh, yes, the doctor and the the thing with the heart, and the way he pretended. That was important, right? He and the preacher together, what was it called. Something like aluminum.

A foil for a hero is better than a father.

He started at that, wondering if Loki had been in his head earlier, deeper than he suspected. "Shut up," he repeated. He might actually fail, and it was just too depressing to think about summer school. Not that he made bad grades, but exams were weighed two or three times more. He'd already made a couple of Cs this semester. Any more and he'd be screwed. Dove would probably kill him too.

Oooh, trouble in paradise? Are Romeo and Juliet squabbling already? Loki stretched out, with a catlike bonelessness, silently snickering. The dim lighting turned his skin from a golden olive to almost brown, but his eyes were as a bright as ever, an acidic lime green.

Ari flushed angrily, the laughter reverberating inside his head. Before he could stop it, sparks flew from his fingertips. The fire that always swam beneath his skin broke out into the air - engulfing his half-finished essay in the process. "Damn it, Loki!" he growled, throwing his hands in the air, flinging the ashes over the smooth wooden flooring. His hair burst into flames. Maybe his brother would shut up if his place was burned to the ground, he thought viciously.

You know, I think I liked you better as Icarion. At least he was fun.

Loki languidly rolled to his feet and moved to block Ari's way out of the room. His eyes were swirling, green and gold. "Don't do this princeling," he said smoothly, aloud. "Come with me tonight." His physical voice was more soothing and comfortable than a four chord harmony. His smile, however, had vanished. Ari froze, little flames flickering and crawling over his limbs. He couldn't think for the roaring in his ears; the fire was reflected by the shadows in his eyes.

"Let's drown our sorrows," Loki told him, persuasively. "Not waste time with fits and tempers... come with me and forget about this."

Ari refused to meet his eyes. "You'll just upchuck tomorrow," he croaked, the roar choking his voicebox.

Loki grasped him by the shoulders and steered him towards the hall. "Funny thing about mead," he said. "Nasty stuff, but it isn't bothered much by curses."

The flames died out with the touch of his skin, scars on scars. Ari's eyes were wide; his veins were buzzing. He has no idea of the time, but he wasn't sure that he cared. He was screwed either way. What did it matter, by whom, when, where? He pulled out of his brother's hands, his head beginning to spin a bit. Everything was in shades of lavender and emerald and orange.

Mmm... I heard there was a new place opening on the streets. They've even straightened up that French torchbearer.

The rest of the night was a blur. He caught moments and snippets of conversation in the rush. Laughter and dancing. All thoughts of trouble with Dove and school seemed very distant. There were stars hanging in the ceiling and the ground moved like waves under his feet. Everything was hilarious.

I don't think I should be doing this at my age, he said, dubiously.

What, at over two thousand? You're not human, Ari, and hardly American.

The place was underground. Maybe it had once been a subway, or some kind of tracks, because it rested on a gridwork of ancient steel. The lights cast an ethereal atmosphere, subtly shifting to betray the eyes. Those that were quite human came and went without a trace past the barred gates. The music was played hard and fast by nimble fingers - more or less live - the words screamed out in a tongue that he could understand. Throngs of bodies moved together and then apart with charmed grace, as if under the influence of a fairie rave.

Hands reached for him from every direction, grabbing his sleeves or twisting locks of his tousled ginger hair. There was a girl with spangled hair that reminded him of Glory, but when she turned away, he could see all of her bones jutting out from her back. Loki took hold of him and led him through the night; Ari followed unquestioningly, as he had so many times before. For once, they were of a similar mind - a desperate, roving one, all in the purpose of forgetting old memories, and yet, together, as two brothers, reliving them in the passing moments.

I don't remember. I never remembered even before... so how would I remember not remembering doing this?

In the morning, it hit him again. Dove, school, a world full of trouble. He scrambled out of bed and discovered that lines of blue Sharpie had been drawn all over his arms and legs. The dark, everpresent circles beneath his eyes had lengthened and his cheeks were flushed with hectic spots of red. He had slept, but not dreamed. He was still wearing the same old ripped jeans as the night before. It was anyone's guess as to what had happened to the rest of it.

Loki's figure appeared in the door; his features were drawn taut in a vaguely apologetic expression. "You started looking quite edible to the 'dwellers at about two in the morning," he said. "I did what I could." Ari noticed the pale violet bruises flowering over his neck and jawline. They had certainly done something, whatever it was.

Ari went to look for a shirt with long sleeves. "Oh," he mumbled. "That's nice." So they had been underdwellers: the bloodsuckers, the shapeshifters, the demons, and all else that dwelt apart, neither here nor there, every so often mingling with both gods and mortals. And that meant that they had probably been in a suburb of Hades. Another thing he didn't want to think too hard about.

He tugged on an old orange knit hoody and then went looking for his sneakers. "Going back to Del, then?" he asked. He was too foggy to be really curious, but he supposed that he ought to ask. He didn't think he'd be letting Dove see the marks. (Or Alex, for that matter.) Good boys didn't do things like this.

He poked his head out of the closet; Loki had disappeared again, without saying a word. He sighed and then spotted his shoes set on top of one of the wall shelves. He had no idea what time it was, but he was probably late, judging by the amount of light streaming through the window. He quickly laced up sneakers and darted downstairs. Time to fail, yay.

He was grabbing a slice of cold pizza when he noticed the parchment laying on the kitchen table. He sidled over and looking down at it. Loki's familiar spiky cursive scrolled down the entire length in a devoted transcription of the Lorem Ipsum. The black ink was as iridescent as a beetle's shell. His brow furrowed as he twisted his head to the side, trying to see if the Latin meant anything more. It was the default text for practically everything, and it didn't make much sense for Loki to have copied it out at random, especially not by hand. He had never been the industrious type.

I owe you one, the thought came.

As soon as Arise reached for it, the parchment began to change, the ink spreading and the texture distorting at a touch, becoming what seemed like any few stray pages of paper. A second later, he held his essay in his hand - or at least the first half was his. The rest seemed enough alike, even in his own handwriting, but it strung together his ideas in a way that made him look almost brilliant. Yet they were things that had hung at the tip of his tongue and lurked ungrasped in the back of his head. Things about philosophy and mythology and tragedy that applied almost as much to him as to a fictional Puritan minister. Matters of the heart.

He hesitated, wondering again how much of his thoughts were really his own. On the other hand, Loki had plenty of reasons to be contrite, even sincerely so. After all, they were brothers, right? And he really, really didn't want to admit that he'd failed English class to his girlfriend's face. He was already enough of an idiot.

He slipped the papers in his back pocket, grabbed his skateboard, and then made his way out the door. It still wasn't like Loki to do something respectable, or honorable, or even nice, but... He'd take what he could today, and just try to ignore the deep suspicions beginning to brew.

I have other plans for this summer. Big plans. He could hear the smirk in his brother's voice, as if it was a visible thing; however, Arise did his best to shrug it off as nothing.