"Should I pour you so tea?"
Bashenga wore an unamused expression as he sat on the floor of Asherah’s cottage.
His eyes burned with a malevolence few could stare into without going mad.
But Asherah had seen Abaddon at the height of his madness. His son was cute in comparison.
"...I’m aware being restrained may not be to your liking, but I did try to make them as comfortable as possible."
"..." Bashenga looked down at the stuffy Christmas sweater that was functioning as a cheerful straitjacket.
Asherah went back to making tea, even though she had not necessarily been asked to.
"Nothing to say for yourself about your actions..?"
Bash said nothing.
"I know you’re probably hurting a lot right now. Your parents, and now Thea, have gone missing and you don’t know where they-"
"I know exactly where Thea is. I might have had her back by now if you had not insisted on standing in my way." Bash finally said.
Asherah smiled at him sadly. "You have to answer for the things you’ve done, Bashenga. Asgard would have vanished by now if your siblings hadn’t stopped it."
Bashenga said nothing and just turned his gaze to anywhere that Asherah wasn’t.
The goddess stood up from her table with a porcelain teacup in her hand. Steam billowed from the cup to fill the room with a very fragrant aroma.
She walked over to Bashenga and kneeled down, bringing the cup towards his lips.
"Though I confess... I’m not wholly convinced of your sincerity in the matter. If you wanted to destroy Asgard, then you could have done it long before anyone got there."
"..."
"You were hoping that they would stop you. You did it to be an."
"No one died."
"Is that your baroter for which acts of cruelty are deed acceptable?"
"I cared not for acceptance. I needed Odin to be afraid as he lay there blind and feeling his entire realm burn down around him. He needed to feel the cost of his negligence."
"Is that what you think Thea would want?"
"I think she would want to be ho. Looking after her people. Playing with her sons. If no one cared what she wanted, then why should I care about the wants of anyone else?"
Bashenga didn’t an for his words to sound so venomous. And yet they had just the sa.
He couldn’t take them back once they were out in the open. But perhaps he didn’t want to.
"...Do you know what I think?"
"If you’re going to tell that Thea wouldn’t approve, I don’t want to hear it."
"I think your mothers would be heartbroken to hear you say sothing like that."
Bashenga’s brow furrowed.
"There’s much you don’t know about your parents." Asherah continued. "They had full lives before they were married. Before they were gods.
There are stories that aren’t mine to share with you, but I can assure you that they have lived at the rcy of people who didn’t care about their wants. Who stepped on them because they could, or to prove points. Do you think they would be thrilled to hear you sound so much like them?"
Bashenga was shaken to his very core.
It was quite easy to tell people that you didn’t care what the world thought of you. Not even family.
But lying to yourself is much harder.
The fact is that Bashenga had made the choices he had out of love. He wasn’t necessarily expecting to be praised for that, but he hadn’t thought that anything he had done would be sothing his mothers would find that much fault with.
But as he envisioned Ayaana, and even his new stepmother staring down at him with disappointed looks on their faces, he felt slightly sick.
"Don’t look so disappointed with yourself. I’m not saying you’re like those people at all. Only that there exists a shared line of reasoning between you, or so you would have believe."
Asherah finally put down the cup when it beca clear that Bashenga wasn’t going to take a drink.
Instead, she sat across from him with her legs crossed and an unnervingly inquisitive expression.
"I think the difference between you and them is that you actually wanted to be stopped."
Bashenga looked confused.
"So you an to tell that you just so happened to bask in your sister’s domain for a mont? Despite knowing that she could reach you instantly." Asherah folded her arms.
Mira had been standing against the doorway this entire ti.
She lingered around, hoping that her brother would at least look at her so that she could know he wasn’t feeling betrayed.
Asherah’s words gave Mira so small comfort. But she would have liked it more if she had heard things from Bash himself first.
"...I paused to gather my thoughts, nothing more-"
"Oh, hush, boy."
"Mmf!?"
Asherah forcefully covered Bashenga’s mouth with her hand.
"Unlike the rest of your family, I have known and watched you for a long ti, in many more lifetis than just this one. You don’t have to tell the truth, I already know it."
Bashenga made his usual unamused eye roll.
"Do that again and I’ll pluck them out."
Bashenga didn’t roll his eyes again.
Asherah sighed and turned to Mira, who was still lurking about.
"I think I’m going to keep this one here with for so ti. Please tell your family he’ll be well taken care of."
Mira twirled her thumbs anxiously. "That..."
"You don’t need to worry, Mira. He’ll be here at least until your parents co back."
Mira didn’t know if she liked that plan a whole lot better.
And then, for a mont, Bashenga looked up at her.
His eyes were neutral, but not lifeless. His thoughts were known only to him and him alone.
Mira wished that Thea were here in that mont. She would have known what their brother was thinking. Maybe she would’ve even been able to get him to talk.
Mira could only do what she knew how.
"Oh... okay then. Bye, Bash."
She leaned down beside her brother and pressed their foreheads together. Bashenga didn’t pull away.
Perhaps that was a good thing.
As Mira started to leave, she felt a mory enter her brain.
While initially surprised by the contents, she soon realized their aning and nodded.
"Don’t worry, bro. We’ll get her back in no ti."
Bashenga didn’t respond, but this ti Mira didn’t wait for him to.
After she disappeared, Asherah decided to try her hand at offering Bashenga tea again.
"..."
"We’re in for a long stay together, you know? You can at least try it."
Bashenga relented, if only to get the teacup removed from his face.
After he had his first sip, Asherah lowered the cup. "Well?"
"...My mother’s tea is better."
For so reason, Asherah threw her head back and laughed heartily.
"You know what? I don’t mind that at all."
-
In a dark, damp room of the house, the sound of blows striking against flesh was in constant repetition.
Satan was a man dedicated to his personal brand of craftsmanship. He excelled in violence.
However, he was not a splendid torturer so much as he was a warrior. That deficiency of his was becoming apparent the longer that his investigation went on.
It frustrated him. He simply didn’t have the know-how to properly get the answers out of Dagon that they needed.
Breaking the body was easy, even if he was dealing with a vampire. So was breaking the soul.
But the mind was tough and needed work. Work he didn’t understand, or have a proficiency in.
And he was running out of ti to get what he needed. Like everyone else in the house, he was also feeling the weight of all the absences. Though he would’ve rather died than admitted it.
Satan grabbed Dagon by the collar and held him up against the wall.
He punched Dagon in the face so hard that his fist burst through his skull and struck the wall on the opposite side.
At that mont, the heavy door creaked open, and the demon looked over his shoulder.
"Ti’s up, rage-a-holic. We can’t do any more waiting."
Sei and Karliah stood in the doorway with impatient looks on their faces.
Satan was instantly annoyed at the sight of them.
"Piss off, broads. I’m working here."
"Yes, but what do you know now that we didn’t know thirty-six hours ago?" Sei asked sharply. "A location? The reason the flowers were created?"
Satan growled incoherently.
"That’s what I thought." Sei snorted. "If you want sothing to hit, then go find one of the other atheads in the family to do it with. Don’t stand around here playing gas with the lives of our family."
"What was that, witch..?"
Satan removed his fist from Dagon’s head and dropped him.
Satan approached her threateningly- his aura chaotic and outwardly hostile.
"Back off." Karliah held her hand out in front of them. "Or do I have to make you look like handso over there?" She pointed to Dagon.
"I’d like to see you try, he-she!"
Abaddon, Ayaana, and Zahara were more than just the pillars of the family.
They were the equlibrium.
And withouth them around to keep everyone balanced, everything was on the verge of crashing down...
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