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Troy stands tall.
There’s really no need for any of its soldiers to set foot outside the walls, Tim thinks idly. Their supply route through the mountains at its back is secure. Why do they do it anyway, day after day?
Perhaps it’s just boredom.
“Why don’t you end this?”
It takes a moment for Tim to register that the question is aimed at him. The Hellenes stopped noticing him years ago. War has become everyday. He passes through their camps and battlefield unseen.
Not today. A soldier steps up. “You’re one of them, right? So why don’t you do something?”
Tim studies him. A tall man, clad in a red-stained thorax, clutching two spears. From Argos, likely. No king, not even one of the dozens of princes—and certainly no one important enough to demand answers from a god.
“Who are you?” Tim asks, anyway. This is the most interesting thing that happened to him in years.
“Jason.”
Tim actually startles for a moment. Surely this couldn’t be—no, this man has nothing god-marked about him. He’s no leader of the Argonauts, just a soldier like so many others.
Besides, that Jason has been dead for many years. Tim forgets how time passes.
“Would you have me turn the war in your favor then, mortal?” Tim lets his amusement bleed through his voice. “Tear down these walls so you can have your pick of women and treasure?”
But Jason shakes his head.
Tim raises his eyebrows. “Or would you rather I petition my brother to have the sea swell up and destroy your camp?”
“No.” That was a quick answer. Not so fearless, then, this foot soldier.
Tim smiles and moves closer until they’re face-to-face. Close enough to stab. Close enough to kiss. “What do you want, then?”
Jason visibly struggles with that one. Tim waits.
A cheer rises behind them. “Achilles! Achilles!”
Patroclus has done it, then. Donned his beloved’s armor and decided to play at being a half-god. For now, the Trojans are cowering in fear. It won’t last.
Jason curses—using Tim’s father’s name, Tim notes in some amusement—and turns away to join the fray.
Tim lets him go. He won’t see Jason again. This is war, after all.
He’s right, and then he’s not.
Everyone else is looking at the two heroes that died today; at Hector, beloved of his city and his family; at Achilles, his fury finally abated. Their pyres will be lit according to the rites. Their deaths will be mourned.
These are the moments that feed Tim’s power. If only he could pay attention to them.
There’s a pile of bodies no one cares for in the river. The Hellenes will try to dispose of them, later, if they have time, to have a continued supply of freshwater.
When Tim steps up to watch the preparations for a funeral begin, he notices a flash of red—a thorax. It’s the soldier from yesterday. Jason.
Only yesterday he asked a god to stop the slaughter, and now he’s dead.
He asked the wrong god, Tim thinks. And: I could have fucked him. Jason wanted it, too. Tim saw it in his eyes. He wonders how it would have been. Would Jason have still gone to fight, after?
Suddenly, Tim is tired.
That night, Tim whispers a plan into Odysseus’s ear. A retreat, and a present left behind.
Troy has fallen. It just doesn’t know it yet.
The Romans don’t quite believe in him. Oh, they use the same images, the same tales, but his priests wear strange robes, and his name is not his own.
There is no Roman god of war. Tim checked. There’s just him, and the warped image of him that they pray to.
Still he supports them. They are a military empire, after all, plenty for him to feed on. It’s a good thing he doesn’t feel the cold, the way they insist on marching North.
Today they will cross a river and deliver a crushing blow to the tribes that have gathered to stop them. Tim is quite impressed by how those barbarians rallied, actually. This will not be comfortable territory for the Romans.
The local troops are waiting for them. Tim looks into their faces: There’s fear there, yes, and excitement. He can’t remember the last time he himself was so roused. Then his gaze stops, returns to a face.
There is that soldier again. Jason.
Tim doesn’t know why he remembers his name. It’s been so many centuries since they spoke. He’s caught glimpses of his face, occasionally, but they’ve never been this close.
Of course Jason’s on the losing side, Tim thinks, exasperated. He doesn’t know what the Germanic gods have planned for Jason, but he does exert some influence himself to make sure he at least survives that day. A bit rude, perhaps, but he doesn’t think they will mind.
There is nothing special about the man, after all, except that Tim has seen his face before.
Tim comes to free Jason that night.
The Romans are fond of slaves, a practice Tim always found distasteful. His siblings laugh at him for it, say it is part of his sphere of influence, after all; Tim thinks Leonidas had the right of it when he declared a group of willing and well-trained soldiers superior to an army of slaves. There is nothing to be gained from the ownership of another human being, and much lost.
So he takes off Jason’s bindings in his tent that night. He will run. Maybe they’ll catch him, maybe they won’t.
Tim, for once, is wrong. Jason turns. “Why did you do that?” he asks.
“Why not?” Tim hasn’t become any more likely to explain his reasons over the years.
Jason frowns. “You know our language?”
“Why do you ask a question if you don’t expect an answer?”
“What else would I be asking?”
“Why aren’t you—” Tim abruptly realizes how ridiculous they are being. “Just leave. Someone could come in anytime.”
Not quite the truth, but Jason doesn’t seem to recognize him as a god this time around. Tim has no intention of telling him.
“All they’ll think is that you picked your spoils for the night.”
Tim considers that. “And have I?”
Jason smirks.
Centuries after they first met, Tim gets his answer. It’s yes, yes and holy Sandraudiga yes.
Funnily enough, there are more questions, now. Such as: How is it that this one man interests him so? What it is that draws Jason to him, in turn, even in a situation like this?
Jason is gone before dawn, of course. It won’t hurt to look out for him in the future, Tim thinks. He could do with company other than his siblings, even if it is mortal.
It will be the last time he and Jason are on opposing sides.
As the years pass, Tim notices that Jason has a tendency to die young. They’re lovers whenever they meet; friends whenever Tim manages to carve out some time for them; but it never lasts.
It’s a good thing, then, that Tim is never actively looking for Jason. These days, he travels wherever his instincts lead him. There are plenty of wars to keep him strong, and he doesn’t owe anyone his loyalty anymore. His family has scattered to the winds. There are new gods, now.
Tim does not and will not ever understand monotheism. It is simpler, he supposes, to believe in a single god without fault; it just seems to him that it also makes life much more boring.
But not in Constantinople. This is a city of religion, yes, but also of culture, with enough wars passing through to keep him fed.
Tim has attached himself to the court. His skill with languages ensures him welcome wherever he goes. Once, he spent a memorable year as a taster for a king before he grew weary of having to eat every day.
So he’s there when the Varanguin guard arrives.
He’s heard of them. Norsemen, hired by the Prince of Novgorod to take out his brothers. Now that he has become Grand Prince of Kyiv and Ruler of the Rus, married a Byzantine princess, and converted to Christianity, he sends his mercenaries on as a royal guard.
The emperor needs them, Tim knows. Basileios has held onto the throne for twelve years now by the skin of his teeth. There’s an army gathering to dispose of him.
As the first men enter the palace, murmurs ripple through the crowd. And no wonder. In comparison to the people here, they are huge. The tattoos that line their bodies and the two-handed axes they carry don’t help.
Tim, however, is distracted. He recognizes the eyes of one of them.
Jason isn’t a Christian; he worships the old gods of his people. He doesn’t speak Byzantinian, but that doesn’t matter when Tim approaches him. They’re together from that moment on. Tim attaches himself to the group as a representative of the most holy throne.
Basileios wins his war. Jason’s people are utterly pragmatic, disciplined, and some of the best sailors Tim has ever seen. With their help, the emperor conquers swaths of lands that wouldn’t have seemed remotely attainable just years ago. And he knows who to thank for it—the Varanguins get paid, and paid well.
Tim hasn’t had this much zest for life in centuries. With regular sex and plenty of well-fought battles to feast on, he manages to protect Jason from every arrow that aims too true. They fight side by side.
It’s not an arrow that takes Jason from him.
There are many gods in this city. None of them save Jason. There’s sickness in the air and in the water, and within a week, Jason is gone.
It takes Tim some time to identify the emotion he’s feeling as grief. It’s been so long.
He knows he will see Jason again. Whatever keeps Jason’s soul bound to Earth will see him meet Tim again. Jason’s a soldier, after all. It never lasts, Tim knows that.
He fashions himself a miniature of Jason’s runestone and waits for the next crusade to arrive.
Tim manages to ignore this new feeling of attachment for a few centuries. Empires rise and fall and rise. He’s pretending to be visiting Greek scholar when he learns of the Qezelbash, a Sufi order of Turkic elite soldiers that are set to extend the influence of the Safavids into the Ottoman empire.
He knows where to go.
Jason loves someone else. He has a sword-brother, and even if Tim believes that there’s nothing sexual about it, he does know Jason.
It’s strange. Only now that Tim sees his attentions (that smile, that touch to the neck, that laughter) turned to someone else does he recognize them as love. He wonders how he missed it.
Tim blesses him and withdraws quietly. For thirteen years he watches as Jason fights for a god Tim doesn’t like and loves somebody else. He should make himself look away, he knows, but he can’t.
Each reincarnation of Jason is slightly different. His upbringing and culture do make a difference, as little regard as Tim has for these things. He never remembers Tim. But he’s always just as fiercely loyal, just as angry at injustice, just as gentle on the inside as he is fearsome on the outside.
And Tim loves him. Why else would he, selfish god that he is, be here?
So he watches. It’s the longest Jason has survived so far, which hurts, just a bit, that it would happen when Tim is this distant.
Then comes Chaldiran.
Tim feels like throwing up. Ottoman executions aren’t public, exactly, but there is enough of a crowd that he doesn’t stand out. There’s a row of men, waiting to die. One of them Tim would know (has known) everywhere.
Only now do they tear down his red helmet. Tim can see the dried blood staining Jason’s hair. He didn’t surrender willingly.
Jason looks up. His eyes meet Tim’s. There’s recognition in them.
Then the sword comes down.
The lord of the underworld greets Tim personally. They have always gotten along well. It’s in the nature of things.
“Brother.” They hug.
“I’ve come to ask about—”
“He’s not here,” Hades interrupts him.
“Where, then?” Is it possible that Jason belongs to some other god? No, Tim decides. He was Greek first. Whatever it is that brings him back, Hades must know.
Unless Jason already belonged to someone when Tim met him. What if all this is just coincidence? What if Tim is actually the one standing in the way of Jason finding peace because he keeps Jason from fulfilling his destiny for a deity even older than him? His blood runs cold.
Some of what he’s feeling must be written on his face. His brother places a hand on his shoulder. “He is immediately reborn. His soul is tied to yours. As long as you walk the Earth, so does he.”
“How do I find him?” The question has an urgency now it hadn’t before. Tim knows, now.
“You are the god of war,” his brother states the obvious. “He will be fighting in a war.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“No, I can see that, the world being what it is.”
Tim begins searching. He travels back to Europe (his traditional sphere of influence, in a way), and he looks in every place his feelings tell him is a tinderbox. It takes traveling all the way West to Ulster to find him, and he must have missed at least two incarnations because Jason is twenty again.
Tim is a smith, this time around. It’s easy to offer the local clan his services and get introduced to one of their best warriors.
It’s torture, having to wait for Jason to fall in love with him. Tim doesn’t quite manage, in the end. He tells Jason weeks into their acquaintance, half-supposing that he will be rejected and ostracised as a demon.
Jason tells him: “I love you, too.”
It’s still not easy. They’re poor. Tim cannot reasonably use his, uh, talents too often or Jason will notice.
The O’Neill is getting ready to rebel against the English. Tim doesn’t care. He’s seen too much to think that any of this matters. Empires rise, empires fall. Someone always hurts.
Jason does. He sees the smaller picture—all the people that are suffering because of an injustice. Their pain is real to him in a way it hasn’t been to Tim in a long time.
They argue. A lot.
Tim suspects that it’s not just about how he occasionally fails to hide his disaffection. Some part of Jason must guess that Tim is concealing a part of him.
Speaking of hiding—that’s not easy, either. Tim is rarely nostalgic, but he does miss the days where he could take Jason to bed and no one would think twice about it.
They go to war. Jason goes, first, and Tim follows, because what else would he do. The Irish even win a few battles.
There are negotiations. They fail, as Tim knew they would.
The Irish win more battles. At Yellow Ford, they manage to kill almost two thousand English soldiers without many casualties on their own side. Jason is worried, though, and Tim agrees. The towns are still firmly in the grasp of the English.
There’s talk about the Spanish coming to aid them. Jason prays in the evenings that it’s true. Tim tries not to let it hurt that it’s not to him.
Still, when Jason dies, it’s with Tim’s name on his lips.
Later, they will celebrate this battle. Say: “A quarter of the English soldiers dead, and nearly no casualties for O’Donnell.”
‘Nearly no casualties.’ Just Jason, trying to save a comrade-in-arms.
After Jason’s death, Tim tries. He really does. He knows how much Jason cared about this cause, this country.
But no one has believed in him for over a millennium; his powers of influence are limited. He doesn’t know whether Catholics and Protestants are calling on the same god—but however many gods they are, they are stronger.
By 1601, the rebellion is in pieces, George Carew holds most of the castles, and Tim leaves Ireland for good.
It goes like this: They meet. Jason is young or middle-aged, and Tim appears to be the same. Jason falls in love. Tim discovers all the ways he’s different and the same. They live together for a decade or two if they’re lucky. Then Jason dies, and Tim begins looking for him.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, he finds him in Baku. Jason is twenty-two, one of the “Tatary” and, of course, a revolutionary. And not one of the more moderate ones, either. No, Jason is an anarchist.
At least he survived the massacres of 1905 without him, Tim is relieved to find. Maybe there is hope for them yet.
They settle. Tim is an oil magnate, one of the many Russians who came to the city to exploit its newly discovered resources. He does take a Muslim as his right-hand man and interpreter, so he’s quite popular with the locals. It’s a good guise, even if Jason’s friends don’t understand. The two of them are happy. There are more freedoms every year. Tim thinks—this could be it.
Of course, that’s when war breaks out everywhere. And the first thing the Russian Tsar does is conscript Caucasians to send as cannon fodder.
Tim follows Jason—for once unenthusiastic about the fighting—to the front.
With that kind of weapons, Tim doesn’t need to wonder what happened to the gods anymore. Mankind found a way to kill them. No wonder his siblings have withdrawn.
Against his will, Tim finds himself caring. This isn’t right. He always thought there would be nothing like Troy. But this… this is on a scale where all comparisons to what he’s seen before just fail.
Jason is captured and interned near Berlin for three years. Tim cannot follow him there though he tries—he hates this new century with its passports and papers and birth registers—so he returns to where they made their home. His powers are fading. There is nothing about this war that gives him strength.
When Jason comes home, there’s been two revolutions and three semi-independent republics in the South Caucasus. They don’t last—empires are empires. They’re eaten back up.
Luckily, Jason’s pre-war activities are deemed satisfactory evidence that he’s not a Tsarist. As for Tim, well, he has his ways to survive what other oil magnates don’t.
For a while, Jason even works with the government, coming home and telling Tim about how the Soviet government has established a committee to help with the self-determination of its nations. There are a census and debates about how to determine ethnicity in the first place.
Tim doesn’t like it. In his experience, the desire to divide people into exact groups never helps anyone, and he doesn’t trust the motives of the man who heads the committee. Jason comes to distrust them too. It’s difficult, seeing him like that. Jason has never been quiet about his thoughts before.
The deportations aren’t a surprise. New government, same old methods. Tim runs to the small flat they share, regardless—they’re ‘only’ going for the Chechens, for now, but he wants to be with Jason.
When he comes home, Jason is gone. Taken just minutes before, their neighbor tells him. A case of mistaken identity. The soldiers had to fulfill a quota.
Tim doesn’t know how Jason dies this time, only that he doesn’t survive the march. The bitterness threatens to eat him.
Tim searches for Jason for a long time. This century offers plenty of opportunities. He makes himself live through World War Two (and gods, hadn’t one been enough?), trying to help where he can. He’s in Hungary in 1956—Jason would have been right at home, trying to stop tanks with sticks.
The Berlin wall falls, and Jason isn’t there.
Tim decides to travel across the Atlantic. It’s his first time in the US, but he knows where he wants to go. Gotham is precisely the kind of a city a god of war should settle in.
Of course, that’s where he finally finds him.
Jason is a kid. Tim doesn’t really know how to deal with that. Sure, he could introduce himself in the guise of a fellow twelve-year-old, but that doesn’t seem right.
He can’t just wait, though. Jason isn’t doing well. Tim knows he had difficult childhoods before, that this is nothing compared to, say, the Middle Ages, but… this time Tim can do something about it.
There’s a man who hunts criminals in the night dressed as a bat. In the old days, he would be one of Tim’s—all restrained violence, tinged with a strong sense of justice. Tim gently nudges him toward Jason.
It works. Jason has a purpose again. Tim follows them, at night, under the guise of a bored kid and wonders: Was it too early?
Jason dies far away from Tim.
Tim wonders where his grief went. All he feels is empty.
He goes to work with Bruce because he thinks the man understands what that’s like.
Jason comes back.
His death has changed things. He walks up to Tim, and he says: “I know you.”
Tim can’t remember the last the time he was this surprised. “You do?”
Jason kisses him. There’s death on his tongue. Tim opens his mouth and greedily asks for more. Always more.
There’s a copy of ‘American Gods’ on Jason’s bedside table. Tim sees it and laughs.
When Jason asks, he says: “We don’t need you to believe in us to be real. Humans just would do better to flatter us if they know what is good for them.”
“I’m tired of losing you.”
Jason doesn’t talk about the lifetimes he spent without Tim, and Tim doesn’t ask.
What he does say: “I’m tired of leaving you alone, too.”
Tim grabs his neck, pulls their foreheads together and swears: “This will be the last time.”
It will be.
They will enjoy this life as much as they can. Jason will age, and Tim will pretend to age with him. And when Jason dies—so will Tim. There are ways to kill a god, now.
The Elysian fields are waiting for them.