"Fate has been cruel and order unkind
How can I have sent you away?
The blame was my own, the punishment, yours
The harmony's silent today" Ponyphonic's "Lullaby For A Princess"
~~~~
They took her from his arms, bleeding and crumbled, her eyes glaze...
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"He didn't kill her! His heart is screaming that he didn't kill her!"
They didn't understand, he knew all along.
They never tried to understand, he realized too late.
These past six years would have gone so differently had he realized on October 7th, 2020
In a year, October 13th, 2027, she truly would be gone.
A few months after that, he'd reunite with her and his beloved mentor.
Could he face them?
Could he, the man who could look the title of murderer straight in the eye without flinching, face the two he'd lost in the process of saving them?
She was so young... he was foolish to believe that she wouldn't come for him...
And that the system he'd spent his life in and out of would extend even an ounce of effort to understand her in the way he did.
That Phantom... they were the reason everything had gone terribly wrong.
Athena... Metis... they would still be here if it hadn't been for that Phantom.
Everyone would have been just as happy as they were on the morning of October 7th, 2020.
Everything would be exactly the way it was, the way things ended with Metis' last breath at 1:30pm of that horrible afternoon.
Simon shifted in his cell, looking outwards towards the gallows. His window had always given him such a generous view of his destiny as he watched others lose their lives to their sentences day in and day out.
Had he become concerned with Athena's wellbeing sooner, then maybe he wouldn't have seen what he saw.
The little girl's glazed look as she looked up at him and muttered those awful words...
Mommy's broken... so I'm taking her apart to fix her!
Athena's words burned through his mind and into the scars left on his shoulder. She had spasmed and collapsed as he came closer, perhaps to ask what she meant, seeming just as passed as her mother.
He saw the bludgeon wound in her skull, the blood spitting from where she'd been pierced.
There was no time to save his mentor, if she was any bit saveable. Athena was fading.
Welcome, welcome! Hello, Simon! Is it time for another lesson with Mommy Metis?
His stomach dropped to his feet for an entirely different reason. If the police were to access Ponco's records, for it was Ponco because of the more feminine sounding voice, then Athena...
Athena didn't take her mother's life.
Just look at her wound! The blood spilling from her brain, she was a victim too!
His fate was sealed the moment he heard that shutter click. There were too many other factors to deal with the camera that had just pictured him slicing Ponco up temporarily with the bloodied katana.
"Come on, Athena. Athena, are you still there?"
Cries of pain seeped from the child. An ambulance would come. The cops had been called. He just needed to get her out.
She couldn't stand on her own, even with him holding her bleeding body to his shirt, she was barely able to move. After getting out of the security camera's sight, he quickly discarded Ponco and lifted Athena up, rushing her out to the front gates where first responders were gathering.
Aura and Cosmos had met them already. They were giving their statements when he rushed out the front doors, Athena's body covered in blood both hers and mom's.
"Please!"
The paramedics were right with him. They bound her up the best they could for the time being, collected her information from him, and loaded her in an ambulance after failing to get a response from her. The ambulance she'd been placed in, and that he was now riding in, had left instantly. Two more stayed behind for other injured staff members, but the small child was in critical condition.
It was about 3:40 when Athena went into surgery, 4:00 when Aura arrived with the news that Metis was gone. It was their roughest hour, their last crisis where they went through together. Simon went down to the station the next morning at ten after Athena was released from post-op and placed in stable condition. She had irreversible brain damage, the extent of which still unknown, but she would survive. Less than an hour had passed between when he went to her bedside to observe, to give her an uncle's soft kisses on her cleaned hand, and when he officially confessed to the murder of Metis Cykes.
That was six years ago. Six years, and still just as haunting. The local orphanage made plans with the police to take Athena into their custody after she was discharged from the hospital, but she never arrived.
She appeared in court and testified in his innocence, then disappeared.
She left the courtroom, then left this world.
Her name and face was still plastered on a missing children's bulletin at the station where he confessed those six years ago, but would be removed in just a few months.
Her seven years were almost up, and she would be turning eighteen in March if she were still here.
No service would be held for her though. It had occurred alongside her mother's. The poster with her name and face proclaimed her 'missing', but all who knew her whispered what was suspected by most.
Sometime in the afternoon of October 13th, 2020, between the end of Simon's trial and her appointment with the orphanage; Athena Cykes, who fought so hard against her injury and Simon's indictment, had passed away.
