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After the Ectoplasmic Draught, the only time Icarus feels like he's truly flying is when he dreams.
The dreams get everything right: the wind flapping his skirts, the briny smell rising off the sea, the way his stomach flips when he goes into a dive. Hair blown back from his face, his own pulse loud in his ears. Lately, whenever he's actually flying over the Rift of Thessaly, Typhon's storm obscures the sky, but in his dreams the sun shines bright, beckoning.
The warmth he feels flying closer to it then is not a sense memory granted by the Draught, but by those last few moments of his mortal life. Despite the way it ended, the many times he's joked about how he and his father should have made their escape at night, there's always been a part of Icarus unable to regret his actions; when he was shooting up toward the sky—skin tingling from the rays of the sun, eyes squinting against its glare, the pinprick pain of hot wax dripping onto his back—that was the first and only time he recalls feeling truly alive.
So, in dreams, he does it over and over again. He has his own mechanical wings now, and besides: the gods can't punish what isn't actually happening.
Later, he will come to realize that thinking himself beyond the scope of the gods' retribution is a form of hubris, too.
*
Through slitted eyes, Icarus can almost make out, haloed by sunlight, the galloping horses that pull Helios' chariot above him; he's so close now. Nearly blind and covered in painful bleeding blisters, yes, but pain belongs to the living too, so let it come. The sun is right there. Icarus reaches his hand out to grab onto the horses' reins, and—
"You promised you would fly low," says Helios, Titan of the Sun, Guardian of Oaths, and smacks Icarus' hand away from his chariot. In that brief instant Icarus is allowed to see him without squinting, and Helios is wearing an all-too-familiar face. The last one he ever saw, before he took flight.
"Father?"
Then his wings burn up, and he plummets.
Just as fast as he remembers: the wind flapping his clothes and hair, his fear loud in his ears. The harness around his chest has nothing attached to it anymore, so the lever by his waist is reduced to a useless tassel, he will drop into the sea and he knows the impact with the surface will kill him before Poseidon claims his body. Above, Helios has flown away. Perhaps because his justice has already been dispensed, or because something altogether more terrible is on the way: dark clouds engulf the sky.
As the wind grows violent, Icarus realizes he isn't dreaming of his tower escape at all. This is the Rift of Thessaly, and Typhon's storm. The Father of All Monsters shakes the air with a hoarse scream, and for the first time, Icarus can make out words within that wrathful sound. Typhon is close.
The fear that floods him then is more terrible than any he's known before, in life or in death. Because if Typhon is nearing the Rift, then Olympus has fallen, and Meli—
"Meli!" He calls her name as he plummets, but the howling of the wind drowns out his voice, so he yells louder, shredding his throat raw, as if she'll be okay if he just calls her name loud enough, since he has no wings to fly to her aid, "Meli, Melinoë, please! Where are—"
He glimpses the broken mast of the ship an instant before he smacks onto the deck.
All the breath's knocked out of him. Somehow he doesn't smash through the wood, as he would have expected, but the impact shoots pain through his entire body and he's too dazed to move, just lies there wheezing, flat on his wingless back. Above him the roiling darkness opens a dozen red eyes and a hungry maw. Glad I didn't save that Draught for later, Icarus thinks, looking up at his imminent end, and coughs out a weak laugh. For all his transgressions, once again he's getting a better deal than he deserves: either he'll join Meli wherever those devoured by Typhon go, or she isn't there and his death will buy her time to complete her escape.
The air no longer smells of brine. It has turned stale and putrid like the breath of the beast. Icarus closes his eyes, feeling oddly at peace, with no regrets.
"You would dare smile in the face of your undoing?"
With a jolt he opens his eyes and there she is: standing tall on the deck, the storm at her back, in that frightful form he's seen her take on in battle, when she becomes a starless sky in the shape of a woman. "Meli..."
"I am Melinoë, Goddess of Nightmares; and you, Shade, will address me with all due respect." Her voice is like Helios' whip across his knuckles. "Tonight, as far as you're concerned, I am Fear itself."
Her eyes flash, green and red, devoid of the warmth she's always shown him before. Merciless as a grand statue. Logically, Icarus can understand why mortals would find this aspect of her frightful, but all he can think about is how beautiful she is. Something tells him he should not voice that thought right now.
"This is my nightmare, then?" he asks instead.
"It is, or it should be. But it seems you would defy the will of us gods even in this."
Icarus smiles. "I mean, you're here. So long as you stay, how bad a dream could it be, hey?"
She turns her face away—flustered?—and calls, "Typhon!" And the beast bends down from the roiling black storm, and its red-eyed face comes down to her level, drooling black tar onto the deck, like a great hound called to heel. Its teeth are each twice as big as Meli is tall, and it allows her to scratch the side of its maw; but when she turns her back on it to approach Icarus, its many eyes track her hungrily.
"Please," he begs, as fear fills his chest once more. Even in dreams, he doesn't want to see this. "Please be careful, Meli."
"Have you already forgotten my command, Shade? You will address me as—"
"My Lady Melinoë, Goddess of Nightmares, Princess of the Underworld," Icarus interrupts, desperately, as Typhon's claws grip the sides of the ship and the wood creaks and snaps. The deck sways with the weight of its attention, a predator awaiting its chance to launch itself at its prey. "I beg of you, beware the beast, he will harm you if he can!"
Meli stops in her tracks. "You fear for me?" She sounds confused, closer to the Meli he knows than he has heard her so far.
"I do. Please, my Lady—"
"Not for yourself?"
"I'll be fine." So long as he doesn't have to watch Typhon devour Meli while he lies on the deck unable to help. "It's just a dream, isn't it?"
"Just a dream," she echoes, and it is then that Icarus realizes he said the wrong thing.
The wind roars all around, a terrible whirlwind, and Meli's hair flutters in it, her laurels glow red like watchful eyes, pinning Icarus to the deck. Typhon comes up behind her and nuzzles the crown of her head with obvious longing, but a single gesture of hers dismisses the beast, which slinks back into the darkness. The goddess' unforgiving gaze makes her seem almost a stranger.
"Shade of Icarus," she says, her voice echoing in the storm, sending a shiver down his spine, "it seems you have learned nothing from your past mistakes. I am here to teach you."
Icarus is afraid then, for himself. His fear sneaks up on him unexpectedly, like a reflex, but—isn't fear, like pain, something that belongs to the living?
"I am your nightmare. I know your heart." Like an incantation, she says the words and he knows they're true. "You want to be punished for your transgressions against the gods, do you not?" She walks a slow circle around him, dragging the end of her witch's staff along the wood of the deck, and its dull rattle reverberates in his ribcage with every labored breath. "Answer me."
"Yes," he says, settling into the fear. His every sense screams that she is powerful, and he is caught. "What will you do to me, O Goddess?"
She nudges the tip of her staff under the strap of his harness. It is not a bladed weapon, but with a snap of her wrist, some dark tendril hooks into the leather and cuts it loose from his frame. Then the other side. Icarus can feel the power of it like a physical touch, and feels his face burn. He is afraid, but the way his stomach just swooped is something else entirely.
"You dared to reach for Helios' heavenly chariot," says the Goddess of Nightmares, staring down at him impassively. "Not just once, in life, but repeatedly in dreams during your death."
"I almost got there tonight," he confesses, unable to suppress a smile.
The back of his skull hits the deck with a dull thunk, and it takes him a dazed second to make the connection between that impact and the tip of her staff now under his chin, hovering over his windpipe.
"Ow," he says, belatedly. She says nothing. Her feet are close enough to his hand splayed on the deck that he could grab onto her ankle, he's so close, he can't help himself.
He expects his touch to pass through her, as it always does. But here the dream imitates the effects of the Draught again: she is solid in his grasp, flaming hot where her skin burns a vivid yellow. Better than touching the sun, he thinks deliriously. A thrill passes through him at the contact, and then she kicks his hand away. "Sorry," he mumbles. "Didn't mean to do that."
"Did too," she retorts, peevish, so he's forced to admit, "Okay, I did, a little."
"As a lowly Shade," she continues, in her earlier solemn tones, "you dared to court a goddess." Unbidden, his eyes go to her translucent arm, which glows a ghostly green even while the rest of her has adopted her nightmarish form. Like even her godhood cannot reconcile the loss. "Your attentions caused her irreparable harm, and even so, you did not give up."
The one regret that has hounded him throughout his afterlife—that he let her take such a risk for him. That he wanted what wasn't his to have, again, and she paid the price instead. Her staff is cold against his throat when he swallows.
"I tried to stop wanting you," he confesses, through the sour taste of guilt. "Turns out I wasn't very good at it."
"And you feel there will be a reckoning. That you will be punished for not giving up on your desire. For agreeing to the risks of witchcraft a second time." It is as though she is reading out loud the thoughts that Icarus has gone over a million times. Nightmare or no, she does know his heart. "For wishing that the same witchcraft could be braved again, and again, and again."
"If that isn't hubris, I don't know what is," he points out, with a laugh half-choked by her staff.
She plants the foot he tried to grab before on top of his chest, above his pounding heart, and he has to force himself to close his eyes so he doesn't see up her skirt. His arrogant mouth is watering.
"I mean, look at you, hey," he says, when closing his eyes does nothing to quell that want. "You're perfect, and you want me back. How long should I keep getting away with that kind of luck?"
"Thus I ought to punish you, and even the score in your mind." He nods, and feels those dark tendrils creep up his neck and down his front, tiny pinpricks of her power on his vulnerable skin. "I should tear you to shreds until you feel you've suffered adequate injury to compensate for mine, is that it?"
There must be a distinction people make between the aliveness of fearing for one's safety and the aliveness of arousal; this, Icarus is quickly learning, is a line that must have never existed for him. Mortal danger was the best thrill of his life. He imagines those pinpricks of power becoming blades that slice through his flesh as cleanly as they did through his harness and he feels himself get harder, because it would be Meli tearing into him like that. Her frightful form eating him up. "Honestly," he pants, "you should do anything you want to me."
She hums, thoughtful. "I could. I could chew through you as surely as Typhon back there. But 'evening the score' is... more Nemesis' style." Then the cold pressure of her staff beneath his chin withdraws. The tendrils go dormant and harmless on his skin.
Icarus feels a stab of panic, that she changed her mind, decided to call this whole thing off—
"Besides," as he opens his eyes desperate for any cue to fix whatever he did wrong, and he feels her staff nudging his thighs apart, then his skirts out of the way, "it cannot really be called a punishment if you're enjoying it this much, can it?"
Her features are muted in her nightmarish form, but he can tell, with the ease of long acquaintance, that she's laughing at him. His face burns. "It's you," he says, apologetic. "How could I not?"
When Icarus flies alone at night, scouting ahead, he watches the sea for signs of enemies thrown overboard but not yet drowned. Sometimes, the surface of the water ripples in the wake of an enemy ship, and the night sky reflected in it seems to shudder. In this form, when Meli sighs, she looks just like that.
"Oh, Icarus," she murmurs, with a longing that makes him ache, "perhaps I shall allow you to escape your punishment, if you are very, very good for me."
"Yes, Meli—Lady Melinoë, please." Her staff, cold as ice, slides up the inside of his thigh, and she orders, "Don't move," so all he can do is groan as it grazes his balls and traces a line up his cock. It comes to rest in the divot of his hip, pinning him to the deck as surely as her foot on his chest. He has an incredible view when she slides her free hand—the ghostly one—down her own body to touch herself.
Icarus begs, desperate to be allowed to touch her now that he can, and she ignores him. Digs the staff in a little harder, making pain bloom in that spot, but it's all mixed up with his desire, because it's all her. He's supposed to learn a little restraint, isn't that the opposite of reaching for what he's not allowed to have? Yes, he supposes it is, but—look, Meli, just want to level with you here, if you keep touching yourself like that in front of me I think I'm going to come just from watching, hey?
"How very flattering," she replies, with another rippling sigh, and as she slides her fingers in Icarus has to close his eyes. He can still hear those wet little sounds, though, and smell her in the air. "I, ah, I wouldn't mind seeing that sometime. But you make a compelling argument there. I should make the most of this while I can."
"Please, be my guest," Icarus says, trying to laugh away how perilously close to orgasm he feels, and then her foot leaves his chest and the staff clatters to the deck. He feels her slick hand wrap around his cock and is about to ask her to take it slow if she wants it to last when he feels her sink down fully onto him. "Oh, gods, no way, I'm—"
"You said you'd be good for me," she teases, and clenches around him, deliciously cruel, and when he looks at her she's smiling. "Icarus, be good."
His breath, he has to steady his breath. He has to think of something else. Smell of brine, the deck of the ship beneath his back, those little tendrils of power like nails digging into his skin. It all feels alive, all of it. When she first took him inside her, in her tent after the Draught, he knew he should distract himself with some other thought if he didn't want to embarrass himself, think of his next flight route or the contents of those strange glass jars on her shelves, something that wasn't how good he felt, but he couldn't do it. He needed to be present in the moment with her, it might be the only time he got to be enveloped in her like this. She rode him for maybe a minute, by a generous estimate, and then he was spilling inside her, nearly blacking out with the intensity of it. Meli hadn't come yet, and he felt a deep shame overtake him in the aftermath of his body's betrayal, but then he saw the look on her face.
That good, huh, she murmured, and her flush spread down to her chest, and her eyes were hungry. Like she was pleased to have wrecked him so quickly. His dismay was quickly forgotten, as she let him make up for it with fingers and tongue.
These memories aren't helping his restraint. He wants to be good for her, to make it last, but she has dug her claws vividly into his chest and sweat is starting to run rivulets between her breasts as she murmurs, "oh, oh," and, hey, there's hubris and then there's thinking he's stronger than this, no way.
"Meli, I can't," he pants, reaching down to thumb her clit so that at least she isn't too far behind.
She clenches down around him and he comes, crying out in pleasure; through the haze of it he sees her starless-void body shudder above him, rippling and spilling out of its bounds, becoming a nightmare vision that splits into a dozen gaping maws, rows of sharp teeth, burning green and red eyes as she swallows him whole and—
*
He wakes up.
The Draught's effect passed several nights ago, but if Icarus still had a pulse it would be through the roof right now. He gasps for breath as a reflex. He can still feel the ghost of her teeth and claws rending him apart, and judging from the painfully aroused state of his body, yes, he's definitely lacking some key survival instinct—but he's already dead, so it's a little late to care.
On the cot beside him, Meli asks, so very sweetly, "Bad dream?"
She looks like the Meli he knows now, and she smiles when she sees him notice her hand between her legs. "Actually," Icarus says, wondering if she has a spare Draught she didn't tell him about or if he could just go right back to sleep, "it was a wonderful dream, thank you for asking."
"That must be why it fell apart. A nightmare is only a nightmare as long as you're afraid of it. That last bit was a flash of inspiration, since you were afraid of Typhon earlier on, but apparently you enjoy being eaten alive, so you woke up anyway." She sighs, with feigned annoyance. "What am I going to do with you?" Her hand starts to work faster.
"I very much hope you'll think of something," he tells her, drinking in the sight.