Getting to the Other Side

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
 
Her fists hit into a marble column of the temple.
 
Crunch.
 
Blood pools and spills out across her knuckles. The red splatter across the white column is somehow satisfying.
 
She tries not to yell, to scream, to curse. The others are not far away, doing what they are supposed to be doing. Comforting the gods.
 
Crunch.
 
Peg doesn’t want to comfort the gods. She doesn’t want to offer them second chances, or redemption, or encourage them to do better and try harder. She wants to scream at them. To yell at them to stop crying and feeling sorry for themselves. To find their own fucking strength to do better and stop relying on others to build them up.
 
Crunch.
 
You want to be better? Be fucking better. You want things to change? Fucking change them.
 
Crunch.
 
But, what the fuck had she done? Nothing. She had stood by, following down proscribed halls and expected doors. She'd been in the room with fucking Akmon and had done…nothing. Instead watching Vera placate and soothe him because someone had to do it to get the damned oathstone. Because that is what they are doing: jumping through hoops for dead gods. And it doesn’t matter that one of those gods tattooed ‘Defiance’ across her ass because at the end of the day, she was just a pawn in the game of Kelesta and Morwen, like everyone else.
 
Crunch crunch crunch.
 
From the first step into Elowyn’s door, she had known she didn’t want to be there. She knew what was coming. Seeing Kal and Eos. The way they were. The way she loved them. Stupid fucking gods. They weren’t friends. They weren’t family. They were gods who couldn’t get their shit together and made it everyone else’s problem.
 
Crunch.
 
Not. Crunch. Fucking. Crunch. Family.
 
Her hands throb, swollen and bloodied. What the fuck was family anyway? A father who traded her to hags, a mother who hated her, a brother who left without any explanation…an ‘aunt’ and ‘grandmother’ who tortured her?
 
She sinks to the ground, leaning her head forward on the bloodied marble column. A father who was torn apart. A brother who was killed in her arms. Family was pain and death. Maybe the gods were family afterall.
 
 
****
 
Back in the temple. Back where they return over and over and over. Playing their faithful little roles. They had done their duties, collected their rewards. Now they would go on like life still mattered until the next time they came here to be good little servants of Fate. Peg knows she should go with the others. She learned a long time ago that alone was not better for her. And yet…she focuses on the pain in her hands…feeling it, letting it be real and grounding. She declines Nel’s healing, but Aloysius is too quick for her to stop and as she feels the cuts and bruises heal she remembers a promise made to a boy that his girl wouldn’t hurt herself anymore. How had she come this far and still feel so much of what came before? She sighs.
Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe nothing does, except for this. Aloysius. Vera. Nel. Muse. And if nothing matters, then…well…fuck it.