When they’d met him, there was no sense of immediate connection. They have heard about fate, and they know that they believe in it, but at the same time, they can’t help but feel that meeting him was fate and the lack of inherent linking was anticlimactic.

But now there is something. They don’t know what it is; you rarely know what destiny and bonding feels like, merely because it happens so little in life. How many true connections have they had? How many memories feel like the ones they have spent with him? They don’t remember. The closest friends they had, they had left behind with a dust of regret and a bin of love. Then they had voluntarily dunked themselves in the river Lethe, and moved on, re-crossing the Styx to live again.

And so they wander. And they grasp onto him desperately, not wanting to let go. They think, in the back of their mind, If I ever meet Hades again, I’ll take you with me. Selfish, they know, but they have to admit to themselves that it’s true.

But here he is. On the roof. With little to no outerwear in the cold weather, snowflakes are drifting from the sun to his lashes, and his hair is sprinkled with crystals of salt and sugar. And he is humming, very lightly, and he is shifting, like he is preening his wings. But he has no wings; he’s human. Just like the rest of them.

When they had first heard his past; what he’d gone through, what he’d seen, they thought he’d be boiling. Not in the physical sense, but more in the emotional sense: that under all that cool exterior, he would be brimming with some burning rage that would lick at his skin like brittle needles.

They thought that he would look at the sun and feel a sense of kinship in how they both burn and burn and burn until they explode. But they’d also realized one sleepless night that he relates much more to the moon, how they are both light, and caught up in a one-sided conflict that both created them and their suffering, and how he is like the moon in the sense that he is alone amongst gravity. He is the contrast to their compare, and vice versa: he makes no sense.

He is a paradox on the roof; a paradox in the room next to theirs, and he stands still against the world like they’re eyeing his glittering, waxed wings. They think to themselves that the world probably is; but most likely for a completely different reason than he thinks.

He thinks they eye him out of anticipation. When will you fly, bird? When will you stretch from the nest and hunt your prey? When will you extend your talons and snatch us from the earth? And then, when will you melt?

But they watch him out of envy. When will you soar, and when will I follow?

They know when that time is.

“Please get away from the ledge,” they say, and the door to the roof clicks shut behind them.

“Hello,” he says as a response, and he doesn’t even turn back. He is still facing the sun, and he’s watching it set. “Did you come here for the view too?”

“We both know you didn’t come here for the view,” they say. “Please get away from the ledge,” they repeat.

He sighs. He takes a good ten steps away from the ledge. Then he sits down, shoulders hunched, legs crossed, head in his hands. Strands of matted hair escape between his fingers, which are red at the knuckles and a little bit purple in some places.

“I don’t want to die,” he explains, and they sit down next to him— except their legs are stretched out, and they lean their weight on their hands, which are placed behind them.

“Oh,” they say. “Then… why are you here?”

“I don’t know when to jump,” he says. He digs out a feather from his pocket. It is edged with dripping wax. “Still need to seal the envelope.”

“The… envelope.”

“To my father.”

“Ah.”

Silence. The sun is sinking below the horizon. Behind them, the moon is rising.

“You know, you don’t need to actually forgive him for anything. Or whatever.”

“Oh, nah, that’s not what’s in the envelope.” The feather goes back into his pocket. “I just… dunno. I wanna leave. But I don’t wanna leave without doing anything. For him, I mean.”

“How do you feel about him?”

“I feel nothing, really,” he says. “Maybe it’s a part of whatever he did being normalized for me since I was young. Or maybe it’s because I’m fucked up and can’t see what’s wrong with anything. Maybe those two are the same. Or maybe it’s because I know I’ll be leaving soon anyways.”

They look out past the roof, to where they know he will fly. “You know, there’s no sea here.”

He tosses his head back, and the fringe falls from his eyes in a cascade of white. “Yeah, I know.”

“If you fall… you’ll splatter over the ground.”

“As I said, I don’t want to die.”

“I know, I know.” They look forlornly at the dying embers of light. “But if you fly too high again…”

“I’ll fall,” he says. “But don’t worry. I’m not flying during the day this time. Just at night.” He takes out a piece of— something— from his pocket, and when he smoothes it over the stone floor, they see that it’s an envelope. The envelope.

He also takes out the feather from before, and the wax is still malleable. “Hold the envelope down. I’ll need two hands for this, and I don’t want the thing to be caught in the wind.”

They oblige.

Then he holds the waxed feather up to the sinking sun, and the wax is dripping, dripping carefully onto the envelope, right where the seal should be. It pours from the golden feather like a waterfall; it’s not water, nor is it blood, despite how blood is thicker than water, _____, don’t forget that, it’s just wax. No strings attached. Flammable.

“Hm,” he says. The wax is only a thin thread now, so he throws the feather somewhere to the side where it clatters against the stone. (Neither of them care.) Then he lifts his right pointer finger and he presses against the wax, icing it over.

“Alright.”

“…Alright,” they say. “I… okay. I guess you’re leaving now.”

“Yeah.” He stands up, wavering slightly, like a leaf about to fall over to the wind’s embrace, but he rights himself. He takes the envelope and he hands it to them.

“It’s been great, Green.” He sighs. He shakes his head a bit. “You won’t remember me. You won’t be able to reach me again, don’t try dragging me down with you. And… give this to the old man, yeah?”

Green’s eyes are a little misty. He’s surprised it took them that long. “Yeah, I will.”

“Great.”

The envelope is handed over. Green holds it to their chest. He walks closer to the ledge, and the sun is completely gone now, just the moon hanging over them. He looks to the moon wistfully, the rain from it pouring over his patchy face, and he is blessed by Iris. Then he turns to Green again. Then he turns back.

And then he jumps.

Green does not look to see if he flew or not. They know, inside, that he has. And just like how they met, there is no severing of fate or destiny; it’s all rather anticlimactic, and they feel virtually nothing. They think that perhaps it will catch up to them soon; maybe they’ve just become so used to his antics that it doesn’t feel real, or maybe they’ve just been living in such a surreal world that they’re too messed up to tell the difference. Maybe those two are the same. Or maybe they feel nothing because they knew that Icarus would have to fly away from them at some point.

Green is walking to the stairs when they notice that the envelope is suspiciously limp.

And with a sort of quiet wonder, they realize that it’s completely empty.