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As time passes, long and arduous, flashing and quick, Corin finds few constants remain over his many lives.
His eyes are blue, startling and strange, as they have always been.
Wars will rage between clans of humanity, and will continue to do so.
Within the confines of Europe, before it was even known as Europe, a statue exists. Its location varies depending on the decade, but the Wandering Hero exists nonetheless. Erected after Corin’s very first life.
Four thousand years, and that is all Corin finds to be constant. The only things he finds comforting as nations rise and empires fall and everything he knows falls through his fingers over and over and over.
Now, while the world was lacking greatly in constants, it entirely made up for it in reliable changes.
No matter the language, or the culture, people laughed. People cried. People learned. People taught. People fought.
Corin drew comfort from that. No matter what, people were people, and if they ever forgot he would be there to teach them again.
So, when Corin was four, once again, he decided; he would live the life of a human again.
Not an immortal. A human.
That’s how Corin let himself make friends in college, unable to charm those he went to school with no matter what he did. These friends, wonderful and clever, always seemed to remind him of comrades long dead.
Hauroko glared like Dee while wrapping another burn Corin had gotten while cooking.
Kiergan hummed like Drop, absently and deep, distracted.
Leo, Leave-it, Levi, he joked like Pat. He had the eyebrow wiggle down to a fine art.
Michael? Michael smiled like Corin once did, soft and in awe of his very talented friends.
Corin missed his old friends greatly, and always had, when his heart was beating and when it wasn’t. He would always miss them. He would always remember them.
He would miss his new friends too, when their time passed, and Corin was alone again. It was lonely, the life of an immortal.
Especially when no one knew you had lived for four millennia.
Corin’s melancholy, but familiar, thoughts were snatched away by a soft tap at his arm.
He blinked at Michael and raised an eyebrow as youthful amber eyes widened in alarm.
“Shit! Sorry ‘Rin,” he apologised quickly, “We were just, uh, wondering if you wanted to do tourist stuff today? You’ve been to Venice before, right?”
“Many times,” Corin nodded. I remember when it was a swamp. “I can show you around tomorrow if you’d like?”
All four of his friends brightened.
“Hell yeah!” Leo exclaimed, pumping the air and nearly hitting a waitress, while Kiergan quickly apologised on his behalf, “We can see the hot statue!”
Corin laughed.
“The what?”
“The- you know!” He pulled out his phone and frantically Googled, “This one! Uh, the Wandering Hero ? Why’s he called that if he’s kneeling?”
Oh shit. Oh fuck. I forgot he was in Venice. Crap.
“Because he migrates across Europe,” Corin provided with an exaggerated wave of his hand, hiding his sudden nerves. “Moves city to city every decade. An ancient tradition. Older than the Olympics, and more consistent too.”
“Nerd,” all four of his friends teased.
“But that’s really interesting,” Michael noted, “such an old tradition lasting so long. Why do you think that is?”
“Greek traditions always seem to last,” he provided with a shrug.
“Oh, so economic downfall is the next world wide sensation?” Leo teased.
Corin rolled his eyes. “You little shit.”
“Am I wrong ?”
Corin huffed, muttering a few curses in Greek. The language was comforting on his tongue; familiar but still not quite right, like a child’s favourite blanket or toy being restored. Similar to memories of old, while still being new and strange.
Leo laughed and put his phone away.
“But you will, right? Show us around?”
“I will,” Corin agreed, “can't very well leave Americans to traverse Venice without someone reining them in. Imagine who you’d offend,” he replied, snickering.
Leo made an anguished noise of offence. Michael laughed.
“I resent being called an American,” Hauroko said sharply, “I’m British and Japanese, get it right ‘Rin.”
Corin laughed outright, nodding all the same.
“I know, Harry,” he grinned.
Hauroko glared a little at the familiar nickname, but smiled despite herself.
“Yeah, a bit offensive there ‘Rin,” Kiergan nodded, “looping us in with the Americans. ”
“Cry us a harbour to throw your tea in!” Leo retorted, sending Michael into a fit of hysterical laughter.
Corin laughed too, fond of all of them.
Yeah, he really liked his friends.
The next day, true to his word, though a little reluctant, Corin took his little band of misfit friends through Venice. They were not dissimilar to a mother duck leading a squad of little ducklings.
The merry band of misfits saw cathedrals, and canals, and all the wondrous things Corin could think to show them.
It was about noon, nearly lunchtime, and as far back as Corin could push it without drawing suspicion, when they came upon the square wherein the Wandering Hero resided in his most recent decade.
Only two months now before he was moved again, Corin cursed the horrid timing and prayed to every god, deity, and ancient hero he could think of that nothing terrible happened with his friends here.
Only two months and the statue would be in Budapest, and Corin and his ducklings would be safe.
Still, now standing at the edge of the pretty square, designed to be beautiful with or without the statue, Coin couldn’t help but admire the most dangerous constant in all his lives.
The Wandering Hero was a beautiful piece, and quite the sight to behold, ancient equipment perfect preserved in amazing detail. It was like he’s been carved out of time itself. Where Corin flowed and changed with the times, all but his eyes, the statue was always there. Rigidly stuck in a time long past.
Corin loved it for that, a piece of his home.
Corin was also intimately aware how dangerous it got when he was anywhere near the statue. He’d died every time he got near, though to be fair… there had been something between a squabble and a full out war in the general vicinity every time Corin drew close.
Most of the time he drew close for the express purpose of taking cover, or just on accident. He’d died clinging to the statue once, during the French Revolution. He’d been a doctor, but still met the business end of a bayonet.
So Corin was justified in his trepidation.
“Hell yeah!” Leo beamed.
That didn’t mean that his friends knew any of that.
“He is… kind of hot,” Kiergan admitted.
“His armor is cool as hell,” Hauroko said, smirking.
“Anybody else feel like they’re being stared at?” Michael wondered, “Y’know, like a magic painting?”
“Don’t be absurd. A lot of things are magic in this world, but certainly not the Wandering Hero . He’s existed for about four thousand years, if he was magic we’d surely know by now!” I’d know by now, Corin chuckled and shook his head, “It’s just an amazing piece of art.”
“An amazing piece of ass you mean,” Leo teased with a laugh.
Kiergan snorted and high-fived Leo, Corin rolled his eyes.
“Are those veins?” Hauroko wondered, tilting her head back and forth, catching the glare off the statue.
“Of silver I think, yeah,” Corin nodded, “he’s always looked like that,” for as long as I remember, “but it might’ve been poured into the cracks he’s accumulated over the years.”
“Let’s go take a pic!” Leo exclaimed.
Corin went rigid.
“You want to… get closer?”
“I mean, yeah ‘Rin,” Hauroko rolled her eyes, “how else are we supposed to take a picture with the damn thing?”
“Right, right of course,” Corin smiled.
It was too wide, too bright, it was all wrong but Corin couldn’t do any better with his heart hammering in his ears like that, even when his friends gave him weird looks for it.
“Go ahead, I’ve taken so many,” he lied, “it’s really not worth it.”
“Oh, come on!” Leo exclaimed, draping himself onto Corin, “that’s the whole point! To commemorate the visit!”
“Nostalgia,” Michael nodded sagely.
“I’ll remember,” Corin replied firmly.
“That’s not the point , Corin,” Kiergan groaned. “It’s so you can look back on the picture and go ‘oh yeah, I remember going to Venice in the break between semesters at Havard, with my four bestest friends in the whole wide world! They made me get a picture with a well renowned statue, under duress. I was fairly pissy about it,’ and then you show your children and grandchildren, and you tell them the story.”
Corin wasn’t going to win this fight, even though he’d likely win the argument by pointing out his complete lack of desire to bear children, or even the fact that he was nearly four millenia older than any other living breathing person on Earth so couldn’t possibly take a romantic partner without feeling like he was with a fetus at all time. That definitely would have gotten him a leg up in the argument.
Of course, that meant explaining that he was an immortal to begin with, which he had not done since his first few lives.
He felt like a coward though, fearing death when he was the only one in the world who could conquer it. He’d definitely frame it as concern for his friends’ safety, and he was concerned about their safety, of course he was, he was also a selfish coward and he didn’t want to die in this life. Not so young.
“I’m really fine right here,” he reiterated, though it was definitely a losing battle; he’d been present at enough of those to recognise one by now.
Each of them grabbed at his arms.
“Corin, please !” they begged.
There it was, the final nail in his coffin. They knew how to push his buttons far too easily.
He groaned.
“Fine! I’ll take a picture!”
His friends broke away, whooping in glee, ignorant to Corin’s frantic scanning of the vicinity for danger. They dragged him over to stand by the statue, waiting as a couple knelt and took pictures, touching their hands to the statue’s outstretched one.
Corin shucked his friends’ grips, and took in the statue.
A strong jaw clenched in almost pain, perhaps a grimace, and sharp stone eyes stared up at him. His hair was mostly short and curled perfectly, framing his face well. One hand lay on the skirt of his armor, the other outstretched, fingers slightly spread, reaching for something. He looked resigned to his fate.
He’s beautiful.
That wasn’t new though; the Wandering Hero was well reclaimed as a beautiful artwork. His sculptor was unknown, even in the early decades, but with the expert curve of his cheek, the expanse of his chest skillfully accentuated under the stone shirt with the strap of his quiver across his chest, the way his warrior’s skirt rested over his thighs, how he near sparkled under the right light from the silver veins covering his body, Corin had suspected more times than not that it had been the gods of old themselves that had blessed the world with such a masterpiece.
He smiled softly at the face of the statue. One day , he thought, one day, you’ll live longer than me .
“Ok, Mikey you first!” Leo exclaimed, pulling out his phone.
“The plaque says a selfie!” Michael laughed, but stepped over anyway, kneeling down and putting his palm to the statue’s, smiling at the camera.
Leo grinned and took a few, including one in which a pigeon landed on Michael’s head and cooed happily .
“Alright, alright!” Leo nodded as he shooed the pigeon away, “Kiergan! Time for two hotties meeting!”
Kiergan laughed and rolled his eyes, kneeling next to the statue and gently grasping the outstretched hand. Leo took a few photos and then nodded.
“Ok, ok! Me, Hauroko, and then the nostalgia-less Greek! ”
The four laughed as Kiergan took Leo’s phone and took a photo of Leo holding the statue’s hand, and then one of him grinning and draping himself against it, pretending to weep.
“What are you doing that for?”
“I’m pretending to be his lover who lost him, and is crying over his statue,” Leo provided with a laugh.
Corin rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“You’re insufferable.”
Leo grinned and stepped away, “Harouks, your turn!”
Hauroko rolled her eyes and stood behind the statue, not wanting to kneel on her bad knee for only a picture.
Leo nodded.
“Ok ok! Corin! Your turn.”
Corin took another cursory look around for danger, at least a commotion, and when he found none. Most people had gone off to lunch, and anyone else was well away.
He took in a deep wary breath and nodded, stepping forward to kneel before the statue. This close though, he realised he’d not even scratched the surface of how beautiful the carved man before him was. He had to take a minute in gay panic, face flushing as he looked at the art piece in all its glory, up close.
Leo grinned and started recording, wondering how long it would take Corin to stop pining over a statue.
Corin sighed a little, and nodded firmly in determination, face still flushed as he softly reached out, entwining his fingers with the statue’s, their palms flush, and smiled at Leo for the picture, squeezing the stone hand for the hell of it.
The hand squeezed back.
Corin’s smile dropped and his eyes blew wide in alarm, his entire body going tense. Did he imagine that? Surely he imagined that?
His gaze snapped back to the statue. The stony complexion was retreating, and the hand in his suddenly gripped him like a vice, sharp stony eyes turning deep brown, still with a stony glaze over them, wild and wide as the forests of Argos.
He took in a heaping breath, the first in millennia, and screamed in a language lost against the winds of time.
Corin’s mother tongue.
“ Lady Medusa, don’t turn around! ”
Everyone jumped.
Corin, still knelt, was gaping at the no-longer-stone man turning his head this way and that, taking in the world around him, neck cracking with the movement.
“ Where am I?! ” He asked frantically before his eyes settled on Corin, the last of the stony edge disappearing, before tears brimmed his eyes, “ Oh- oh! Skylight! ” He burst forward, half collapsing and half latching onto Corin.
Corin caught him immediately, holding him close and supporting him, chest to chest, with one arm around the once stoned man’s waist, his other hand occupied, fingers entwined with the wandering Hero ’s.
A searing blush spread across his face, both at position they were in and as his brain caught up and registered the very old term of endearment, Skylight , when the first touch of blue appears in the sky at sunrise, right before it was flooded in pink. The Wandering Hero in his arms sobbed in relief and joy.
“ Finally! You did it! ” He exclaimed, “ Oh, I knew it was you, Skylight! I knew you were my soulmate! ”
Corin’s brain broke at that, and his blush spread down the back of his neck.
He stayed there, completely rigid, veins pumping asphalt as he tried to process, and when he finally did… oh, oh fuck .
That was why he had lived so long, hadn’t it? To free his other half from his stony prison.
Tears spilled down Corin’s face and he held the Wandering Hero close, sobbing into his shirt.
“ I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! ”
“ You can speak that? ” His friends screeched, breaking out of their own shock at the situation.
“ Sorry for what? ” The man asked, carting his fingers, still stiff, through Corin’s hair.
“ It took so long! ” Corin screeched, ignoring his friends, “ you were trapped in stone for so long ! I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault, I’m such a coward! If I’d only held your hand before today-! ”
This seemed to baffle the previously-stone man.
“ It’s not your fault, ” he said firmly, “ It’s not anyone’s fault. It was a horrible accident, that’s all it was. ”
Corin curled up with a whimper. It very much felt like his fault, but he could hardly argue with the man he’d kept trapped in the prison forged under a Medusa’s gaze. Only to be broken by the hold of-
Corin drew back sharply, wide blue eyes meeting the warm brown gaze of the man who was once stone.
“ We’re soulmates? ”
The man grinned and kissed Corin’s knuckles, “ we are. ”
Corin’s blush was back, with a vengeance.
“Oh my god!” Hauroko screeched, which was a startling reaction coming from her.
“What the fuck?!” Kiergan yelled, “What the fuck, he was a statue just before! Corin! You said he wasn’t magic!”
“Holy shit!” Leo squealed in glee and alarm, still recording, “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!”
“Awww,” Michael cooed, “Oh, that’s so cute!”
“That went faster than some of my nightclub meetings!” Leo exclaimed which caught the duckling attention.
“Yeah,” Kiergan grinned, putting his shock aside for the minute, “yeah, with an upturned tequila sunrise on your head.”
The once stoned man looked over curiously at the noises,
“ What are they saying? Is that Egyptian? ”
“ You don’t know… English?” Corin asked.
“En-ri-se?” The man repeated, accent thick and foreign.
Corin smiled softly, “ not even close. ”
The man grumbled in annoyance.
Corin giggled at him.
“Oh my god,” Leo whispered, “Oh my god, since when can Corin make that noise?”
Corin squeaked, his blush back as he glared at Leo, “Shut the fuck up, I’m having a fucking moment!”
“Yeah with your new boyfriend! ” Leo laughed.
“ Oh ,” not-Corin's-boyfriend whispered, reaching up to caress Corin’s cheek softly with his knuckle, oblivious to the teasing around him, “ Red makes your eyes even prettier, I didn’t know you could make them prettier, Skylight. ”
Corin spluttered. Leo positively cackled, Michael giggled in glee, Kiergan snickered, and Hauroko crossed her arms and smiled smugly, all at Corin's expense.
“ Now see here! You can’t just say that ! ” Corin squeaked admonishingly, though he was fighting a giddy smile.
The not-stone man seemed completely unaffected, he smiled softly in fact, brown eyes warm and adoring, “ Thank you for setting me free, Skylight. ”
He leant forward and caught Corin’s lips in a sweet kiss, barely more than a peck.
Corin’s brain broke anyway, fiercely trying to remember Mycenaean etiquette.
His ducklings’ cheering was, decidedly, not helping.