Alexandria (ONC entry)

Part five

"You win. I'll come."

Maxence looked up from her notebook, gaping at Asura, who stood in front of the window, his hands shoved in his pockets and a scowl across his features. There was a hard glint in his eyes. "Well, I have to admit," she said, slapping her notebook shut, "I did not see that one coming." She couldn't shake off the pang of pride in her belly, along with something else... was that relief?

"I'll come with you, at least to Athens. I don't–I don't know if I'll fly yet." He awkwardly shuffled his feet, studying a spot on the wooden floor.

Maxence couldn't resist a soft smile. "What made you change your mind?"

Asura grinned, leaning against the wall and shooting her a look through half-lidded eyes. "Went through all this trouble to get you safe. Would be a shame if you got your ass kidnapped in Athens again and I wasn't there to protect you."

"Protect me? You were the one that kidnapped me in the first place!" But there wasn't any snark in her tone, and there was a smile playing on her lips.

Asura leant forward, his hands behind his back. The glint in his eyes had morphed to something more gentle–something mischievous, something that twinkled. "But I saved your life, too."

"After my finds proved to be worthless to you."

"That's besides the point."

"All right then," Maxence laughed, holding her hands up in surrender, "let's get to the ferry then. Athens is waiting."

She missed the fond look Asura cast her way as she turned and left the room.

–

The ferry ride was... bumpy, to say the least. The wind had picked up again, and Asura stood beneath the roof, glaring at the horizon and muttering under his breath as he shot cautious looks up at the grey clouds gathering above them. "I swear to God, if it starts raining..."

She sighed, shaking her head at his antics and walking to the railing, wrapping her arms around her body to keep out the chilly wind.

"Miss, please step back! Miss, you're not allowed there!" A tall man with an impressive white beard stalked towards her, frantically waving his arms and beckoning for her to step back. She did, surprised.

"Why?"

The man scowled at the sky, in the same way Asura had done just moments before. "Weather's been... awfully unpredictable lately. Forecasters're doing a bloody crap job. Even old sailors can't make an accurate prediction anymore. Storms every day, there's been reports of flooding in Spain and South France..." He bit his lip, shaking his head. "Something weird's going on, and I don't like it one bit."

Maxence pondered on his words. That certainly was weird, and she hadn't heard of any flooding or strange storms... "How long's that been going on?"

The man shrugged. "Dunno. Four, five days?" He spit into the churning waters. "Sky's angry, lass. Sea is, too." And with those words, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked away. Maxence stood there, hugging herself against the cold, and blinked, trying to process the old man's words. Five days?

She was so lost in thought that she didn't notice her legs carrying her back beneath the covered area, and she jumped when Asura asked, "You okay there?"

For a couple of minutes, she stared into his eyes and kept quiet. The gears in her head were turning at a frightening speed, and she wondered if he could see it. "The weather's been acting weird lately, apparently."

Asura's expression didn't change. "So?"

A shiver ran down Maxence's spine, and she wondered if it was solely caused by the freezing wind. "So... nothing. I guess."

A moment of silence passed while Maxence peered over the edge of the boat, staring into the clouds. The wind howled a melancholy song, growing louder by the minute–as if straining to be heard after years of keeping quiet.

–

Athens was sunny, and basically everything what Sitia had not been. Maxence could hear Asura mutter something along the lines of "Freaking finally," as he stepped out onto the docks and revelled in the warm sunshine. She joined his side, shoving her hands in her pockets and biting her lip.

"What is it?" Asura asked, a faint laugh escaping his lips. "You're scowling."

"Don't know. Just..." Maxence shot a look over her shoulder, scanning the crowd leaving the ferry for the older man, and spotted him hanging over the railing and staring at the horizon. "What that guy said..."

Asura made a "go on" gesture with his hand, one eyebrow raised and a slightly sceptical look in his eyes. Maxence sighed, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand and adjusting her glasses. Now that the sun was shining brightly, the dirty streaks were only more visible, but the older man's words resonated in her mind and left her feeling uneasy, and she didn't know why. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch: she knew it was important, but didn't know why, or how. It drove her crazy.

"Don't you think it's weird how it's late spring and we've basically only had rain and storms for the past five days?" she blurted, waving her hands around to support her words. "You said it yourself, there weren't any storms forecasted–besides, you probably wouldn't have gotten on the boat in the first place if you had known it was going to rain." She was rambling, she knew it, but at the moment there was no other way she could express her thoughts. It was all a jumbled mess. "We've had nothing but rain on the trip to here, and now we get here and it's a solid twenty degrees warmer. You don't think that's a bit strange?"

"I mean... no? Not really? Weather's unpredictable sometimes, you know?" His tone wasn't dismissive, exactly, but he did sound sceptical and a little cautious. "I don't think it's something to worry about."

"Yeah... yeah. You're–you're probably right." It was strange, how Maxence was searching for comfort from Asura, of all people. The uneasy feeling stayed, and there was still something she felt like she was forgetting, but she decided she would worry about it later. There was a silence between the two of them as they walked–just walked, they had no idea where they were going–but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. Both of them were deeply lost in their heads, their own dilemmas the only thing on their minds.

Maxence wondered if Asura would come with her, to Washington. She wondered if the wound the relationship with his father had left was deep enough to stop him from ever using a plane again. She kind of wanted to convince him to come. But it wasn't her place to say, so she kept quiet, and asked herself why the hell she would want him to come in the first place.

Was it bad that she felt... safe, when she was with him? Whether she wanted to admit it or not, there was some sort of bond between them, and it had grown into something like "awkward friends", and Maxence didn't know how she felt about that. There was a lot to think about. But she would have to think about it another day.

The Acropolis rose up in the distance, and souvenir shops with fake marble statues of greek gods and goddesses started littering the streets, popping up here and there, growing denser as they got closer to the Acropolis and the museum next to it. Maxence stopped short, a sudden realisation hitting her like a truck and knocking the air right out of her lungs.

A gust of wind – hot wind, very unlike the freezing, cutting wind they'd had on Crete – blew into her side and sent her stumbling. It was a whisper, a faint laugh, a mocking sound taunting Maxence, reminding her that she might just have travelled thousands of kilometers – for nothing. A whisper, an ethereal voice singing a long-forgotten song.

"Asura. Asura, where's the nearest library?"