Lethan pairing. (Lou Ellen & Ethan)
He burns her shroud alone. She watches through a haze of smoke.
Dead. Lou was dead, and she wasn't coming back.
He closes his eyes and turns his face to the sky. There's something wet on his face - is it rain, or is it his own bitter tears?
He knows it's his own tears.
Because Lou Ellen was dead.
And he had killed her.
"Don't go," she begged. "We can stay here. We've served our part, Ethan. Kronos will spare us. You don't have to go out there and-"
He shakes his head. He can't think about it again or he'll start crying.
The girl was on the ground, covered in a deep blue shroud with stars and rivers and the earth and the sky.
He bends down, lifts one corner, and stares at her pale face.
Her too-pale face. Her eyes are closed, and her hands lay at her sides. She looked so small now, and just as beautiful as she did years ago.
"Ethan, it's madness to go out there to fight."
He looked at her.
"I have to," he whispered.
Her lips are pink, and her eyelashes stand dark against her skin. He kisses her hand and lets the shroud fold over her.
He kissed her, this time hard and yearning. Fear sank in through him, but he smiled a sad, sad smile and kissed her again.
Her dark eyes bored into his, and he felt as if he were falling into a pit of choking sadness and love.
"Go." she said quietly.
He picks up the body in his arms and sets it gently in the lone funeral pyre.
He went.
His sword glinted in the light as he stepped out of the safehouse and into the war.
Slowly he lights the torch. His hands shake.
He fought.
He saw nothing but orange and the dark red of his enemy's blood.
He gasps for air.
He walked to the throne room behind Kronos.
Something was wrong. He could tell.
His vision blurs, and he cries out in fear. Pain. Desperation. Grief. Love. He can't tell the difference anymore between them.
And he saw the truth; how it slapped him in the face!
He brought the blade down.
He sinks to his knees. He can't do this.
It shatters to pieces.
He gives a cry of pain. A piece of shrapnel is lodged within his stomach.
He really can't do this.
He fell, fell, fell, and on the way down he thought her name.
L
o
u
.
E
l
l
e
n
.
"My fault," he whispers to no one.
And then she was falling with him.
She moved closer, and held him on the way down. She began to glow.
A strangled sob erupts from his throat.
She whispered something.
Not to him, though.
"Thysía." she said. "θυσία."
What sacrifice? he wondered.
Her death, he remembers.
He laughs bitterly. The flashbacks are bitter, too.
And then there's her blood and a flash and the scent of lemons and rosemary.
And everything turns black for Ethan.
The torch drops onto a corner of the cloth.
He woke up next to her.
I'm dead, he thinks.
He was breathing. He was solid.
He was alive. He turns to the girl next to him.
"Lou," he whispered her name, "wake up."
The fire is hell-fire, burning away an empty shell.
And then it had hit him. θυσία. Sacrifice.
She'd died to save him.
He had cried a river of tears.
He screamed.
She was dead, and it was all his fault.
Smoke turned the sky black. There was nothing but him and the blackened sky.
Far away, a girl watches him.
She smiles sadly, putting her transparent hand up to the smoke she can smell even in the Underworld.
Then she turns and walks away.
The girl's name is Lou Ellen.
It's finally happened.
My brain has started grinding out AR fics.
Most of them are angsty.
This is my 4th Aphrodite's Rejects story, BlueMango and mew-tsubaki, you guys aren't tired of reading more and more of my angsty AR stuff? So far we've got one happy ending and three sad endings.
Ah, I love angst.
Achieving Elysium