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He had felt like he would conquer the world for her if necessary.
But then they’d been taken, and when her salvation had been tied to his strength, he had not proven strong enough.
When Constantine had been liberated from his kidnappers, it was not the miracle of that rescue that had shaped his life.
It was the guilt of Athena’s loss.
The grief his parents had suffered.
This grief with biting teeth that had taken what was a chaotic, but happy family and turned small moments into battlegrounds he had not always been able to understand as a child. But he had felt the blows nonetheless.
They had not been able to look at him at first. For he and Athena had always been together, and sometimes he was certain they did not see him, but only the space where she should have stood beside him.
That was what he saw. So how could they not?
His parents...
They remained as ever. Fun and flighty, gregarious people, until tensions rose or anniversaries passed.
His birthday wasn’t his own. On what should have been his and Athena’s birthdays...he could remember there was no celebration anymore and he could never figure out if it was to mourn her or punish him.
He could remember hearing his parents once, in their study, on the night of his sixteenth birthday.
How different would it be if she had lived? If we still had her?
How different, he heard echo in his soul, if he had been the one to die instead.
They would avoid him for days.
Then his parents would compensate by buying him things. Cars, a private plane. And the cycle would begin again. This strange wheel of grief that spun ever on, a series of highs and lows, and always hoping they weren’t crushed to death by it.
And he had his own anger.
That his parents had been consumed in themselves when their children were taken...
His parents were now all he had left, and it might not be an easy relationship, but in the cracks of it, there was love, even if there was also resentment, guilt, and he suspected a dark wish that their daughter had been the one to survive.
As for himself?
Constantine’s life was nothing more than a series of complicated relationships and failed vows. It was in isolation that his weakness had been exposed. It was isolation that had led to his failure of Athena.
All he had been able to do was establish charities in her honor, try to find ways to protect other women in her name. So that her name mattered.
So that it lived on.
And he had sworn to live a life of certain isolation.
There was no love, no wife, no child, on any horizon in his future.
And this was another example of why. Yet again he had failed to protect someone who mattered.
Yet again, he had to swear to honor the legacy that Alex would not have the chance to build.
Though not just now.
Morgan was here.
And she made him burn.
