Brothers and Primordials [Daphne]

[Deleted]

Normally, the thought of actually approaching a child of Zeus would have been pretty low on the list of things Desdemona chose to do. There was something inside of her that sent out a warning signal whenever she was around them, and she was not entirely sure why. In fact, most of the Olympians children sent similar feelings through her. It could be because she had picked up on the hatred and unease between the primordials and the olympians. Or perhaps it had been genetically bred into her by her mother to hate and fear the Gods of Olympus because they feared her. The tale of Nyx sending Zeus home with his tail between his legs was well known and she knew that everyone looked at her like she was her mother, so maybe that was the reason. Still, she had to put aside the unease if she was to accomplish this goal.

She had, of course, heard what her half-brother had done to the daughter of Zeus during the war between the Olympians and her kin. While she loved her mother as much as Xenos hated her, she found it hard to decide whether to take up either side [or any in fact]. So she had not, had waited and plotted and planned. Now, however, it was time to rectify the situation and so she sought out the victim in the situation: Daphne.

Appearing at the entrance to the Arena, she searched for the daughter of Zeus and found her. Gliding over to her on one of the shadows nearby, she alighted onto the ground and stood there with her hands resting against her chest. Her whispering voice spoke.

"Hello Daphne."

[Daphne Scotts]

It had been a long time sine Daphne actually got a hard workout in the arena. Between her supposed therapy with Aphrodite and her quest, it was probably over a year since she stepped inside that stadium. She had the first instinct to grab the nearest Ares kid and challenge them to a duel, bu everyone kept staring at Daphne like she was some foreign object. Maybe it was a little too long since she showed people who was boss. But the staring... the staring was getting to Daphne. She kept her head down as she moved over to the dummies. The people who were at the dummies vacated as soon as she reached them.

Daphne took a deep breath as she reached up to rip off her necklace and a sword appeared in her hands. Why were people avoiding her? Her only faults were her getting kidnapped and possessed and being siblings to the stupid traitor Rayne. Daphne tried to clear her head as she took a swing at he straw dummy. She managed to make a gash in the chest as some straw fell out. That only provoked Daphne to slash at it some more.

With each cut, Daphne couldn't help but thing about everything she had repressed for so long, especially about that night she was kidnapped. Why her? Why did it always have to be her?

She took a break as she wiped the sweat off of her forehead. Daphne swore she heard her name very faintly, but wasn't sure until she checked over her shoulder. A face of a Nyx daughter was staring back at her. Daphne screamed as she turned around and faced the girl. Her heart pounded in her chest as she noticed that Desdemona didn't look threatening.

"H...Hi..." Daphne stammered as she tried to force herself to think in coherent sentences. "What... What do you... want?"

[Deleted]

The older female stepped back as a scream issued from the woman she was talking to. Her pale face remained impassive but the black as night eyes in that face blinked a few times in surprise. She wondered why she had exhibited such a strong reaction to a whispered greeting, but something in that greeting made her pause a few seconds. Her right hand started to tingle as wisps of shadow escaped from it in reaction to the scream and the sharp sword facing her but she ignored it.

"What do I want?" her whispering tone held bemusement and curiosity. "I want many things. Peace mainly. I have a feeling that you could be of great help in that area."

She rested both her hands at her side, dispelling the darkness with a slash of her right hand. "But mostly, I wished to talk about what happened between you and my...brother. But I do not threaten. I do not do many things he does."

Slowly, the tiniest smile escaped her lips.

[Daphne Scotts]

Dread washed over Daphne as she glanced over at the exit. She had no reason to trust Nyx children, not after what Xenos did to her. She noticed the little wisps of shadows coming from Desdemona's hand and she felt invisible ones wrap around her, like that night in the cabin. Why did the Nyx children have to pick her of all people? She had plenty of brothers and sisters to sacrifice instead.

"P...Peace?" Daphne stammered out as she felt her heart pound in her chest. She kept glancing over at the exit, formulating an escape plan that involved screaming and her flying powers. She glanced over at Desdemona as she bit the corner of her lower lip, deciding against her better judgement to hear the Nyx daughter through.

But she brought up Xenos as Daphne felt her chest tighten as fear mixed in with the dread. Her eyes kept looking at the exit more and more as she wondered if anyone would come to her rescue. Of course not... everyone here didn't seem to pay attention to this particular conversation.

"What... what do you want to talk about?" Daphne said as she looked back at the girl. She tried to look her in the eyes, but found that too intimidating as she decided to look at her eyebrows instead. "Everyone knows what happened... Word spreads fast in this camp."

[Deleted]

“Yes,” Desdemona mused, more to herself than Daphne/ “Hearsay, rumour and vengeance are my siblings after all. But that is not why I am standing here talking to you about the recent past. If I wanted to hear the gossip lurking around the Camp, I would simply walk over to the Cabin of Aphrodite and ask them to fill me in. I care nothing for the gifts of my siblings at this fixed point in time. Instead, I seek the truth.”

Resting her hands gently against her stomach, she studied the scared girl with an expression of polite deference. “Make no mistake, Daughter of Zeus. I love my mother and I love my brother. If Nyx asked me to follow her to the deepest depths of our brother Thanatos’ domain, I would follow without qualms. I am always her servant in many things and I count her dear to me, as is my right as her child. In much the same way as you have feelings for your divine parent. However, what my baby brother did to you…that was not well done. To take someone’s soul and possess them, even for a short time? To crawl inside them and hollow them out without caring for the person who lives there? No. I could never be as cruel-hearted as my brother.”

She paused for a few seconds. “I suppose what I am trying to say is…I apologise for what my brother did to you. It was wrong.”

Carefully, she began to roll up the delicate lace sleeve to reveal a pale white forearm deeply ingrained with layer upon layer of scar tissue. There was not an inch of skin that did not have scarring on it. Just by looking at it, one could see that they were old. Fingering the deepest scars, some which had cut to the bone, Desdemona slowly extended her bare arm so that Daphne could see the damage.

“You are not the only one who was controlled by a man who was possessed by a form of madness. Possessed by evil. We have more in common than one would think, Daughter of Olympus,” she softly admitted.

[Daphne Scotts]

Daphne shifted a bit as the conversation of her kidnapping arose. She thought she gotten by with just talking it out with her therapist and her ex-boyfriend. The camp seemed just satisfied with the rumors, except Desdemona. She was the first person who wanted to hear the story straight from her. Daphne turned her sword back into her necklace as she put it on. She needed her hands free so she could wrap them around herself as she glanced off to the side and bite the corner of her lower lip.

"It was... wrong," she said as she glanced back at the Nyx girl as she rolled up her sleeve. Daphne eyed the cuts as she glanced up at the girl while she decided whether or not to accept her apology. Where they really that alike? Daphne never thought she would share similarities with someone she considered her enemy or at least a relative of her enemy. But it felt wrong. Xenos should have been the one apologizing to her, not his sister. It felt like a cop-out.

"Being possessed by the shadow demon was the worst torture I've ever been through," Daphne muttered as she decided to look at the girl in the eye. "Having no control over your body, but watching everything the demon did... It was torture. I tried to fight back... but I was weak. I was released from its control when your brother died the first time around... I still have nightmares about it. I hated that I felt so helpless during that entire time."

Daphne took a deep breath as she glanced down at her feet. "I won't forget what that demon did while it was in control of my body. I try to repress it, but the memories always find their way back."

[Deleted]

Desdemona took a seat opposite her, rolling down her sleeve and brushing her skirts out until they were full again. During this, she simply listened to the blonde speak. Her black eyes studied every micro expression, every twitch while she patiently listened to the tale. Her eyes held Daphne’s timid gaze firmly but without malice or irritation, just bleak understanding. As she finished, the older woman looked down at her skirts as she smoothed a gentle hand over the black fabrics.

“I don’t think memories ever truly go away, especially if you repress them. Repressed things always come back into the light, often times when we least desire them to,” she softly mused, her tone one of a bleak finality. “Both for the one caught in the possession and the one possessing them. Memory is a cruel temptress of a deity, Daphne.”

She studied her black nails for a while, before she spoke again in her now familiar whispering tone. “I was too young when I met my evil. I too was weak.” Intertwining her hands, she studied each groove in them. "It took me a very long time to understand that keeping all the terrible memories inside was slowly poisoning me. That something so out of my control was not my fault. I suspect that it might be the same for you, my dear."

Slowly, she looked up at her. "Would you like to know of what I speak of?"

Her tone, while unintentional, was ominous and somewhat creepy.

[Daphne Scotts]

Daphne didn't know why she just spilled her story to the calm Nyx child, but it made her feel better. Maybe it was because she finally told someone of Nyx lineage how wrong they had treated her during that kidnapping and possession. Nyx had done many wrong things in Daphne's book. Maybe, just maybe, this would cause things to change, but Daphne highly doubted it.

She looked at Desdemona as she said what memories were like. Daphne couldn't help but nod her head in agreement with her statements. "It really is," she muttered underneath her breath as she looked down at Desdemona's hands, but couldn't help but think of the scars she was shown on the girl's wrists just moments before. Something possessed her to do that? She looked up to catch the girl's eye as her ominous and creepy words were spoken.

"What... what was it?" she asked, letting her curiosity get the better of her. She knew she probably would not like the answer she'd get.

[Deleted]

Black eyes slowly turned to make sure that there was nobody around to eavesdrop on them, before she turned a ring on her finger slowly, over and over again.

"Before I came to this camp, I was a foundling. I grew up in an orphanage in Carthage, Missouri. There was a tradition every saturday that the children there would be dressed up in their best outfits and paraded for the families and adults that came through to adopt or foster orphans. Every weekend, I would stand there in my pigtails and frilly white dress and be ignored. I don't know if it was because of my looks or because of some unworldly influence of my mother but the visitors would either ignore me or avoid me like the plague. In fact, everyone did. The other children, the carers, prospective parents. Until I was...seven years old."

Her hands clenched involuntarily. "A man came to visit one afternoon and he chose me. In hindsight, I should have known what would happen. He was too full of smiles, but every time he would look at me with that smile on his face, it never touched his eyes. But I was a child and desperate for somebody to give me attention, so I went with him. When we got to his house, he...he fed me something and I slipped into sleep. When I woke up, I was locked in his basement and for three years I never left it. I lived in fear for three entire years, Daphne. Every afternoon when he came home from his job, there would be a new torment. Those layers of scars on my wrist? They're all over my body. Beatings, sexual assault, tortures. One time he held my head underwater until I almost lost my life."

Closing her eyes for a second, she swallowed painfully at the memories.

[Daphne Scotts]

Daphne stood there as she looked at Desdemona with new eyes. Daphne was really quite lucky she had her mother, even if they were not on speaking terms at that moment, but she had someone to care for her. She couldn't imagine being raised in an orphanage, but that was a sad reality for a lot of these demigods around camp. Their mortal parent didn't want them, so off to the orphanage. Camp was their real home, just like Daphne’s.

And Daphne didn't like how Desdemona’s story was turning out. Her heart seemed to be stuck in her throat as she just wanted to puke it out. Of course there were things worse than the monsters. The monsters had a goal to destroy demigods, but for a human to take it out on another innocent human? That made Daphne sick.

Once the story was over, Daphne looked down at her shoes as tears shined in her eyes a bit. She really didn't know what to say, if there was anything to say. It really didn't hit her that she could relate to a Nyx child like this. A couple of moments of silence went by before Daphne decided she needed to say something. “I’m sorry,” she murmured as she looked up at Desdemona. “That someone can be that cruel to you for so long. Mine was only a matter of months. I can’t imagine going through that kind of torment… torture for so many years.”

[Deleted]

Black eyes opened slowly at the word 'sorry', unfocused and hazy for a few minutes as she drew herself back from the painful memories. A few tears glistened in her eyes, before she deliberately drew them back inside. "I thank you for your comforting words," she softly whispered. "When the man and I were parted, I was brought here. In some ways it seems a little of a disservice. Most of the fellow demigods talk of being hunted by monsters from the Greek Tales but I have no tales of that kind to relate to. Merely a human monster. But the first year I was here, I spoke not one word, I was so traumatized by what had been done to me. I pity poor Chiron, having a ten year old to heal both physically and mentally. He was horrified and furious, I remember."

She studied her fingernails thoughtfully. "But the horror of a centaur was nothing, once my mother heard of what had been done to me. I've watched the events of the war between my side and your side linger on, watched my mother and my brother fight your father and brothers. Even in the deepest dark moments, the anger she has showed is dwarfed by the anger on that single night. Its the only time I have ever been truly afraid of my parent. When I could finally tell her all the details of what was done to me, she took me away from here in the safety of camp to find the one responsible. I could not describe what she did to him before she slit his throat in the end moments, Daphne. And she did it using my body. I felt...warmth at being one with the darkness but at the same time, bitterly cold. I felt his blood against my skin but I didn't care. Not until later, when I was alone and free of her."

She looked up at Daphne. "Like you, I know of being possessed by the darkness of my line. And those memories will never go away. But I learnt that going through hell, whether because of the man or because of my mother, makes you unnaturally strong. Many of our semi-divine siblings or cousins will always be a little weaker inside, because they missed it. And it is that deepest, darkest, inner strength that wins battles, that carries a side through to victory."

Smoothing the fabric slowly under her hands, she gave Daphne a small but true smile.

[Daphne Scotts]

“Chiron as seen a lot…” Daphne muttered underneath her breath when the Nyx daughter mentioned when she finally came to camp, freed from that man. “Then again… being that old, he has to have seen things… but probably nothing along the lines of yours.”

Daphne thought the story was over and that the three years of torment was the end of Desdemona’s story. She was wrong and got so much worse. She felt her gag reflex kick in and the tiny bit of the contents of her stomach creep up her throat. She forced herself to look away from Desdemona and took deep breaths as she closed her eyes. “My… my demon never made me anything like that,” she spoke once she sure words would come out and nothing else. “It just tried to recruit for your brother’s purpose.” She took a deep breath before she straightened out to look at the girl again. “And it definitely didn't know how to control a human body.”

She took a deep breath as she nodded her head. Maybe, just maybe Desdemona and she had something in common… and it was something in common that Daphne needed at certain times. “I guess I am stronger…” she muttered as her mind raced. “I mean… I did fight off that demon for many days… and I got to the point where I could control my body for a few minutes before it took over again… I guess I've never seen it like this before.”

[Deleted]

Black eyes studied her softly, the hesitation gone. "Yes. I do not wish to offend either yourself or my brother dearest but he has never been...a willing student at our mothers feet. When I was possessed by my mother, I was tapped into the primal core of our line's power. But Xenos...has never had such a closeness to Nyx. I think he really and truly fears her. So when he took you...he only touched a tendril of the shadow power he had access too, for fear of being taken. However, there was certainly enough power to do damage."

Carefully, she rose and offered a soft hand to Daphne palm side up. "Now we have met and shared the horrors of possession together, may we be friends? I would dearly wish to have a true friend."

[Daphne Scotts]

Daphne wrapped her arms across her chest as she closed her eyes and took deep breaths. Xenos wasn't even as close to Nyx as she originally thought. So that darkness she felt, that hopelessness... it wasn't as bad as she thought it could be. It could have been so much worse and that thought made Daphne shudder a bit. She took another deep breath as she opened her eyes to look at the Nyx girl at the proposal of friendship.

Daphne's immediate response was at the tip of her tongue, but she paused for a moment. They were... similar, which was something Daphne never thought would happen. Her brother was also a servant of Nyx, but was also scared of her, just like Xenos. Maybe, maybe, she needed someone in her life that understood her struggles like Desdemona did. It took a few moments, but Daphne slowly nodded her head. "Okay," she whispered before she found strength in her voice and spoke a bit louder. "I think we can be friends."

[Deleted]

The smile Desdemona passed her way at Daphne's reply was dazzling, transforming her face from morbid and creepy to almost glowing. Her eyes almost sparked with happiness before she dusted off her skirts and controlled her face. "Oh, that is such good news!" she exclaimed. "You would be my very first friend here in...13 years, Daphne. I think I scare the other campers somehow, so nobody has wanted to spend the time with me that a friend would. I am so very happy."

Leaning in, she smiled and then spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "Just between you and me, Daughter of Zeus, the sweetest revenge you could imagine I can wreak on my dearest little brother when he returns now that I am your friend. I have heard the younger campers talking about how there is a certain code in friendship where you are supposed to avenge slights done to your friends. You have but to say the word and I could pluck him from his miserable existence and mete out the punishment, as I am the elder one."

She winked at Daphne slyly.