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She had transmuted a flower for him once.
They had been in what would become modern-day Greece; the Bronze Age had seen the start of the humans’ advancement, but it would be a long time before they would be able to build true weapons and dazzling city walls to protect themselves. The Deviants had been quiet then, and Ajak sent them off on a routine patrol with a knowing look in her eye and a smile in the corner of her upturned lips. Sersi had turned to him with a small flourish as they walked along the summit of the many mountain ranges in the area and handed him a small, blue bloom.
“So you don’t forget,” she had said quietly, a smile on her face and the wind in her hair.
I won’t, he had wanted to say, but she had already turned to look toward what would one day be named the Agean Sea, and the wind swallowed his words.
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Sometimes, and especially in the dead of night when Sersi is deep asleep next to him and it’s been months, years, centuries, millennia since Babylon, since Ajak first told him the truth of the Eternals and the Emergence and Ikaris feels like he’s about to jump out of his skin, the lies and conflicting emotions tearing him apart, he simply looks over at her. He takes in her serenity, her peace, and her love for this world—she had been the first of them to love it, as easily as she had been the first to love him—and lets the quiet settle over him like a blanket, their plush comforter a reassuring, barely-there weight on his body compared to the crushing pressure he feels.
He notes the stray strands of hair covering her face, the eyelash that had fallen onto her cheek in sleep, and it’s as though the tightening in his chest eases up, even if just a little.
Give me a little more time, he pleads to Arishem. I want to live.
I want to live with her.
It’s an ironic sentiment, knowing what he does about what they are.
Even as he professes his loyalty to the celestial, hoping in silent despair and listening to Sersi’s soft hums when he pulls her close and tries to go back to sleep, Ikaris knows, deep down in his strange, synthetic, and very real heart, that Arishem isn’t listening.
“It matches your eyes,” Sersi says, handing him the stone he would eventually craft into a necklace for her at their wedding over a thousand years later. Ikaris thinks of the moment he first met her in this lifetime on the Domo, thinks about her eyes reflecting starlight.
But stars burn out, eventually.
So do boys when they fly too close to the sun. Sprite’s golden illusions and stories of his legendary alter-ego Icarus cement into myth, and Ikaris forces a smile onto his face.
If they’re just robots that have been made and remade over and over again after countless Emergences, Ikaris wonders over family dinner one night in the heart of Constantinople at the height of the Byzantine Empire, are they truly capable of love?
He watches Sersi laugh at one of Kingo’s jokes, watches Makkari and Druig nudge each other’s shoulders in silent conversation, and wonders if they’re really actually happy or if they’re programmed to just respond like humans to better fit in with them. He wonders if the quiet elation and peace he feels when he looks at his wife is part of his programming too. Had they been created, programmed and told to cling to one another at night, murmuring soft words in their bed? Did Arishem know that Sersi and Ikaris would have ended up like this?
Absentmindedly, his right hand comes up to rub the space over his heart, as though it hurt, as though he could stop the truth from spilling out of his mouth at any given moment. He misses the way Ajak looks worriedly at him, but feels Sersi slip her smaller hand into his without taking her attention off a speaking Phastos, her thumb gently swiping over his knuckle.
Two thousand years after Babylon, the night before everything absolutely goes to hell in Tenochtitlan, Ikaris finds Ajak in the woods behind their calpulli.
“Why?” he snarls at her. “Why did you have to tell me? Why did you have to make me lie to her? Sersi loves these people, this world—it would kill her to know the truth! It’s killing me.”
She brushes a hand over his arm, but for once, this is something she can’t heal. Her eyes, so gentle and motherly, hold so much sadness that there isn’t any room for regret. Because, he knows through his anger, that the burden is heaviest on her as Prime Eternal, that she needs someone backing her too. She needs someone else to know, to carry that with her. Ajak, too, needs someone to lean on. Ajak, too, needs help.
Does that make her selfish? Does that make him selfish, for wanting her to hold it all so that none of them have to carry that weight?
“You and I are so alike, Ikaris,” she says softly. “Loyal. Steadfast. And knowing the truth now and having seen this world since the beginning, being who you are and being with Sersi and seeing the way she sees the world—you are the one who can carry this without breaking.”
Ikaris feels the fragile grip he has on his emotions, and he doesn’t know whether to scream at her or to destroy the tree nearby. He settles for the tree, feels the cosmic energy fueling his anger, and then he’s on his knees in front of the smoking stump and Ajak holds him to her like a child, his cheek pressed against her stomach as his arms lift to wind around her.
They’re on Earth for four thousand, four hundred and seventy-five years before Ajak tells Ikaris the truth about the Eternals.
Nine hundred and twenty-five years after that, Ikaris and Sersi get married, and isn’t that such a human thing to do when they’re timeless, ageless, powerful, sentient beings that are the furthest things from human? But in four and a half millennia, Sersi has only loved the humans more, and this human tradition is the one way Ikaris can think of that will truly show her how much he loves her.
The two of them stay together through it all—the disbandment of their team (and really, they aren’t just a team, they are family), the wars and the times of peace—and Ikaris has to beat down the urge to cower and fly away every time he sees his kind-hearted wife smile as she helps someone, or joins in to dance with them the way she did in Babylon.
A thousand five hundred and twenty-four years after their wedding, they settle down in London. The year is 1924, and Ikaris feels as though he’s drowning in all the secrets and lies, his edges so burned and frayed, that coming home each day to Sersi’s sweet, tender smile is almost agonizing. The truth is on his lips, just waiting to pounce, but turning to ash every time she looks over her shoulder at him or bumps her hip into his when they’re cooking together in the kitchen.
The air is growing thin. He wants to fly away.
In the middle of the night on an ordinary Thursday, he wakes up and almost throws the window in their room open, flying away as far as he can, as fast as he can, the world at his fingertips. In the back of his mind, he wonders whether he could beat Makkari in a race around the globe, wonders whether she’s still on the Domo or if she’s joined Druig in the Amazon yet. He is loyal to Arishem, he reminds himself, loyal to their mission. Ikaris chases the sun around the world, watching it rise, watching it set.
But in the end, with everywhere he could go in the whole entire galaxy, everything in him pulls him back to their flat in Covent Garden. Ikaris slips through the unlatched window and finds Sersi sitting up in bed, her knees drawn to her chest with the bedside lamps lit. Two steaming mugs sit on her bedside table, and she smiles faintly when he steps into the room.
He should close and lock the window.
His fingers tremble though, and when the image of a cage flits into his mind completely unbidden and unwelcome, he stops entirely.
A familiar pair of warm arms circle around his waist, and he can feel her resting her cheek on his back. Ikaris feels then like a puzzle piece clicking into place, and breathing is that much easier. As frayed and torn as he is, caught between his loyalty to Arishem and the celestials and his dedication to their mission and his love for Sersi, for this moment, he is in the eye of the storm.
Tonight, he had tried to run away, and he had been drawn back here. Tonight, nothing can touch him. This night is theirs.
Sersi weaves her fingers through his. “Tea?” she asks after a while, and Ikaris can hear the encouraging smile on her face even before he turns around where she lets go of his hands to trace his jaw, putting their foreheads together just like they had done so many times before. They have known each other too long, have been together too long for her to not understand his silences.
Later, he doesn’t have to say.
Later it is, she doesn’t need to reply.
Minutes pass, and then they’re in their kitchen with a new invention Phastos sent over (“called a microwave, who names something microwave,” Ikaris had grumbled when they first received it until Sersi laughed and threw popcorn at his face) and Sersi pops the mugs of tea in with a sheepish smile because neither of them have heating abilities, and the tea she prepared earlier had gone lukewarm. They stumble back upstairs, where she sits in bed to read while Ikaris washes up before he re-enters their bedroom, walking resolutely over to the window. There’s only half a moment’s hesitation before he latches and locks the window, then falls tiredly into bed.
She puts her book away and turns off the lamps, drawing him close and curling her body protectively around his.
And maybe in some other world, Ikaris wouldn’t have come back home, back to Sersi. Maybe he would have resolutely stayed away, bearing this secret on his own instead of risking her finding out. Maybe it makes him selfish, and he knows now how Ajak must have felt all those centuries ago in Babylon, and so he tries his hardest to block out the memory of their mission, the memory of Thena’s face going slack, her eyes clouding over as she summons her shield and spear. Mahd Wy’ry, Ajak had lied to everyone, and proud, strong Thena nearly in tears as she’s convinced she’s losing her mind, powerful Gilgamesh stepping in to be her protector, and all the while, Ajak and Ikaris had known the truth.
He is supposed to be a protector too, but at this moment he is going mad, and he is weary, and as much as he is Sersi’s protector, he knows full well she is also his. So he just lays there, arm thrown around his wife’s waist, his forehead tucked into her neck as they snuggle closer.
By coming back, does it mean his loyalty and ties to Arishem and the celestials don’t hold as much sway over him as Sersi does? They have been together for nearly seven thousand years, and have been husband and wife for a thousand, five hundred and twenty-four of them.
(What husband could abandon his wife because of the fear of a secret he holds?)
It is undeniable that she has the most influence over him. He does things for her and because of her; he sees the world differently because of her, and so Ikaris, in a world where he could run away, could cling onto his soldier’s loyalty to the celestials, stays.
Sersi hums a lullaby, old and ancient, one she learned from the Mesopotamians, as she strokes his hair and coaxes him to rest. If he holds her all the tighter, she simply presses a kiss to his temple, and just like that, Ikaris is safe in the storm.
Sprite finds them in London just after Queen Elizabeth II takes the throne. “I never want to see another Bollywood movie ever again,” she mutters, her face darkening when they walk past a large posterboard featuring Kingo’s new movie. “Fifty years I’ve had to watch him in them. Never again.”
Seventy years after Sprite shows up at their door, Sersi takes up lecturing and curating at the British Museum. The world of the early 2020s is a far cry from anything they’ve seen before, with human technology and advancement beyond anything they (with the exception of Phastos) could comprehend, and Ikaris feels the truth clawing at his throat, turning his stomach every hour of every day Sersi spends talking excitedly over new artifacts in her care, fondly reminiscing with Sprite the cultures and peoples they’ve seen, knowing and mourning their passing.
He wonders if he made the right choice to stay sometimes, wonders if it’s too late to run, but he knows without a doubt that it would play out the same way—he would still have come back. People return home, and Sersi has been his for the last seven thousand years.
Ikaris has no idea what his memories of his previous lives in the World Forge contain, but he feels somewhere in his synthetic bones that he would still have ended up here, wrapped in Sersi’s arms, in every lifetime.
When Dane Whitman, a local professor who lectures at the Museum, attends a staff holiday party and approaches Sersi, Ikaris almost spits out his drink. He wonders, not for the first time, if he had left and stayed away, would Sersi have met someone new? He wonders whether the flustered young man speaking to her with a quiet sort of confidence would care for her, take care of her. If Ikaris had run, would Sersi have waited for him to come back? Would she have moved on; would she have found room in her heart for someone like Dane?
Instead, she only smiles politely at her colleague, pulling Ikaris’ arm until he’s standing next to her. “This is my husband, Ikaris.”
“I’m here for the food,” Ikaris says, the joke leaving his mouth filled with sawdust. A well-placed quip in a human conversation diffuses tension, and Dane chuckles as expected, but Sersi glances at him with veiled worry in her eyes.
The truth comes out exactly a century after the night he flies away from their flat in Covent Gardens and two weeks after Sersi’s holiday party.
Sprite stays home that day, but Ikaris and Sersi spend their daylight hours exploring and wandering around Borough Market, the smell of fresh baked goods, ripe fruits, and vibrant, colorful flowers guiding their way. Their hands are intertwined as they share a basket of chips and a stuffed pita, picking up little trinkets from different stalls to bring back to their flat.
They spend time admiring the advancement of technology and connectivity of this age, marveling at the way humans have become so connected that there are bits and pieces of the world gathered in this one spot, and compare their favorite foods from the different regions over the ages. They spend part of their afternoon in a nearby teashop, both of them sitting in their own armchairs, quietly sharing space after loud hours full of bustling people and businesses in the city with their cups warming their hands.
Twilight begins to fall, and Sersi and Ikaris pick up freshly baked cookies for Sprite and Sersi’s colleagues on their way out of the Market and back to the flat, their pinkies hooked together, quiet, content smiles on their faces as they walk up the stairs.
It had been an entirely lovely day, only for it to end with them finding Ajak sitting at their table with Sprite, catching up on the last seven hundred years. Ikaris’ smile freezes and falls as his wife surges forward with a surprised, delighted cry, wrapping their leader in a hug. What are you doing here? He wants to ask her, but he already knows the answer. Get out of our flat, he wants to scream, but for all he hates her, he loves her too dearly.
“Ikaris?” Sersi asks in a tender voice when she looks back at him, slowly releasing Ajak from her hold. He hasn’t moved an inch, and their Prime Eternal’s face crumbles.
“Oh, Ikaris,” she breathes after centuries apart. “I’ve led you down the wrong path.”
Sersi’s head turns toward their leader again, and it’s as though Ikaris can see the puzzle pieces falling into place for her, all the struggles she had seen him through in the nearly three thousand years they’ve been together, all the near misses that he’s had she’s never pressed him about. Ajak walks to him and lifts her hands to his face, just like she did so many years ago when she told him the truth of their existence in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and swallows hard while tears spring into her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathes as she pulls him into a hug, her cheek coming to his chest, and Ikaris wants to hate himself for the tear that is suddenly slipping down his face, for the way his arms automatically come up to hold her even as he wants to push her away. With the one person who knows his darkest secret, the one tearing him apart and killing him day by day now here with him, it takes everything in him to not completely break apart when the weight that had been strapped on his shoulders feels lighter than it has in thousands of years. Instead, he curls his shoulders in and buries his face between her neck and shoulder as he allows the rest of his tears to silently fall. Through it all, Ajak’s hand doesn’t stop brushing soothingly down his back, rocking him back and forth, and he doesn’t let her go until night has long fallen and he looks up to see Sersi and Sprite, both watching him with their arms around each other and tears in their own eyes.
The truth doesn’t hit quite as hard as Ikaris had feared it would—instead, Sersi’s hand is gripped tightly in his the entire time as Ajak comes clean to her and Sprite about their mission, fueled by the reappearance of Deviants in South Dakota and the rumblings of tsunamis and earthquakes starting all over the world…the beginning of the Emergence. They are almost out of time.
“I thought they were all gone,” Sprite says in a whisper, her hands balled into fists on the table. “And you.” She steels her gaze at Ajak. “How could you keep the truth from us all this time?”
Ikaris flinches as though she had directed the words to him, but Sersi’s hand comes up to rest on his arm in silent reassurance. Ajak’s face is full of remorse, but not regret. “It was not a burden any of you should have had to bear,” she replies just as quietly, but then brings her eyes up to look at Ikaris. “Any of you.”
“What do we do now, Ajak?” Sersi asks.
The plan is quickly formed—they leave in the morning to find the rest of their family. Kingo is the flashiest and easiest to find in India, so that’s where they’ll start. Sersi sets Ajak up on the couch before she silently prepares for bed, Ikaris watching her from his spot at the foot of their bed. He watches the way she brushes out her hair, at the way her face is lit up from her phone, and he forces his rusty vocal cords to work after so many long hours of silence.
“Are we doing the right thing, Sersi?” he asks quietly, and his wife puts her phone down on her nightstand to stand in front of him. “What about our faith in Arishem? What we’ve believed in all these years—what do we have left if we turn against him? Our mission?”
It isn’t difficult to reach for the now-familiar feeling of untetheredness, of feeling lost. Ikaris thinks about the story that Sprite based on him all those millennia ago, now passed into myth, of the boy flying too close to the sun. He thinks about the moment the boy falls into the sea as he loses control of his wings, the wax melting off the feathers. He thinks about his own wings and feels the moment he plummets from the sky, has plummeted more than once, and that feeling of being tossed about by the wind and his enemies. All these years later, and it’s still the feeling that scares him most. What did he have to hold on to if he let go of his loyalty to Arishem, his faith?
But it is that one, lonely thread that connects him to Sersi that keeps him grounded, keeps him flying. Sersi gently brushes his fringes from his face, and the thread pulses with light in the darkness. It isn’t quite enough to push the darkness back, but Ikaris can see in his mind’s eye three feet of distance in front of him lit by that glowing thread. Even in the confusion and the dark, he has a light that hasn’t gone out. She hadn’t given up on him, all these thousands of years; his constant companion and lover, despite their synthetic hearts. He weighs his loyalty in his left hand and his love in his right, and is it truly surprising that both his hands reach out for her, curling around her hip?
Sersi tilts his chin up with her fingers, looking into his eyes. “You promised you wouldn’t forget,” she echoes the words she said to him in Greece, before it was Greece, all those millennia ago.
I didn’t forget, he says, heart in his throat, and remembers her smile, the wind tousling her hair. Remembers that when she said it to him, she meant to remember the beauty of the world, of the moment, of what they were fighting for.
So Ikaris fights.