SBI - His Curse of Binding

29

The person—the Goddess—representing all that was taken from Tommy, the roots of the trauma that prickled at his skin and racked his head, stood in front of him. Kristin Craft, Phil's deceased wife and Wilbur's mother.

Kristin stared at him, a world of emotions and thoughts idly swirling in her black and tainted eyes. Eyes that had seen all forms of death, betrayals reminiscent of easier days, suicides too similar to Sisyphus' boulder, and children begging for more time.

His tongue wouldn't let him speak. But he didn't know what he'd say even if he could. Tommy had visited her gravestone, read her name and departing date on the monument. She wasn't supposed to be one of them, one of the Gods who tormented his inapparent free will and let Dream release levels of hell upon him. She was supposed to be dead—a wife and mother removed too soon from a loving and complete family—not Death itself.

"I've wanted to meet you for a while now," Kristin said, breaking the tense silence. She smiled sweetly yet there was a layer hidden in the upturned corners of her lips. Something dark.

Tommy hated it. the casual demeanour of someone so... dangerous. This was a person more powerful than Dream, the one who reduced the God to a quivering mess in the Palace and encased him in shadows with a wordless command. If Dream could project and extort so much pain and anguish onto Tommy whilst being a minor God, then what could Kristin do? What would she do to him?

His hands shook. But whether it was out of fear or anger was the question.

Everyone had mourned her. Wilbur had been destroyed by her death and it turned out she wasn't even fucking dead. She had wrecked a once whole family, decimated their relationships with each other, fractured the love and communication between a grieving father and a son left dealing with everything, and for what?

She was Death, surely she understood the ruination that it caused, the evil of its nature. And yet she let it leave a mark on his family.

"Are you the reason I died earlier than I should've?" he asked, trying to keep his fury under control. Though, by the way her grip tightened on her scythe, it was poorly hidden.

She nodded solemnly, almost embarrassed by her answer.

He bit his inner cheek. He shouldn't lose himself to his anger, especially to her. Even though she was responsible for it, this was Phil's wife—the woman in those framed photographs on the wall, who smiled so widely with her arms around her husband and son, the woman Phil loved with all his heart.

But he couldn't keep it to himself. He shouldn't have died in Wilbur's arms, on the floor of a kitchen with Phil knelt by his side and Techno pleading for the myth to be solved, for Ariadne to be saved by her Dionysus.

The thread around his neck strained.

"I didn't even get to say goodbye," he spat, his jaw clenched and teeth gritted. "You should know how important goodbyes are with how you fucked Wilbur up with yours."

His conversation with Wilbur in the graveyard was one he could never forget—how Wilbur's self-destruction and hatred stemmed from her delirious words in that hospital bed.

She lowered her head, the bonnet covering her shame.

"Were you even sick or was that a lie?" he asked, his eyes narrowed at the deity.

"Death does not lie," Kristin stated.

Tommy scoffed, "But it takes, it takes so fucking much and you just let it."

"If there is anyone else in these realms who understands the burden of death, Tommy, it is me," she whispered, her tone heavy and sombre. Her lips thinned as she continued, "I tried to stay, I tried to be a mother to Wilbur for years until I needed to return to my duties. And even then, I tried to balance being mortal and the taker of souls, and that killed me."