NOOR WAS STILL waiting for a godsdamn explanation. Walking through Cairo with Marc, she was waiting for the familiar face to pop up beside her. Zagreus had never stayed that long, away from her. There was that one time when she accidentally spoiled Love Island to him, but that was entirely different. Still, she had one thing going for her.
Her feet were now booted up.
"Do you think he could do it?" Marc asks her, giving her careful glances.
"No," she says, quickly. Then, she thinks about it. Zagreus was never one to share things about his past, and she respected it. He had died, reflecting on his past life wouldn't be very pleasant. Now, she's come to wonder if it wasn't suspicious. If he wasn't willingly hiding something from her. "I don't know. I just wish he'd show up and explain."
"Loyalty," Khonshu purrs, making Noor jump. "The little bug would make a fine Avatar, don't you think so, Marc?"
Clearly, he could not have been less subtle about what he was suggesting, because suddenly Marc is tense and ready to fistfight a god, which isn't ideal. "Don't you dare," he seethes.
Noor, standing between the two, feels like she's holding back Marc from a bad decision. "Yeah, can you not?" She huffs. "I don't know what you're suggesting, but I am not buying what you're selling, don't use my to get to Marc, it's embarrassing." Marc looks at her in surprise. She straightens herself. "And Zagreus is my friend before anything else, that's why I'm loyal to him. Besides, it's not like any of us had a choice in the matter."
She figures his eyes would have gleamed with malice when he tilted his head if he had, well... eyes. "Did you?"
She doesn't see it as anything more than Khonshu being bitter over her rejection, and brushes it off. If he could have, Zagreus would have left to be with his family in Elysium, there's no doubt about that. He would have at least told her, what with the immediate repercussions their bond had created on her life. That's, she's sure of. It's a fact, Khonshu can't plague her mind with that.
When Zagreus appeared to a 16 years old Noor, her entire life was up-rooted. When she started speaking about him to her parents, the logical answer was to send her to a specialised institute. She came out of it, two years after, depressed and anxiety-ridden, with the deepest feeling that something was wrong with her. She had to drop out of school. She loved school. Her mother was too ashamed by what she'd done, sending her to that place, she couldn't even face her. And her dad took her in, making sure that she'd never think of herself as anything more than a coward and a burden. Zagreus had said that the bond was transmitted through her blood. There was no one to hate but herself for it.
At the thought, she almost unwillingly reaches for her wrist, where the little butterfly on her skin sat. From the corner of his eyes, Marc notices it.
He takes her hand, flooding the bond with warmth. Noor blinks up at him, flushed.
"Don't hurt the butterfly, that's what you told me," he says, calling back to their first discussion. "I know what it means now."
She expects pity, because she's never received anything else. But instead, he just kisses her tattoo, and lets her go. He saw the witness of her self-hatred, and kissed it. She's not sure what to do with that – she doesn't have a lot of friends, and she isn't sure Steven knows about that – but she never expected this kind of reaction.
The only person who saw any of it was Zagreus. Zagreus saw her suffer, watched her through her suicidal tendencies and depressive episodes, soothed her through her panic attacks. He was... and still is, her best friend. So yes, Noor is firmly set on the fact that if he had been able to prevent it, he would've. If he had known he could, he would've at least said something.
There was no convincing Noor that this wasn't the case.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she takes it out. Her dad is calling again. She knows that this can be potentially disastrous if she answers, but if she doesn't, it could be worse. She's gone silent for too long now.
Anxiety settles in the pit of her stomach. This was bound to happen at some point.
"You go meddle with your black market thingies," she says, hoping that her voice doesn't waver. "I have to get this."
Marc seems concerned, going by the frown on his heavy eyebrows, before nodding and walking away.
Her heart in her throat, ready to spill out, Noor answers the phone. "Hi dad!"
"Hi, love!" The pet name doesn't calm her down. It always starts well. "How've you been? Too busy to answer, right?"
She lets the comment slide, and clears her throat. "Right, yeah. Work, and studying, I didn't have the time, sorry." That and following my soulmate to Egypt.
It spirals downwards, faster than she could have predicted it. "So you're telling me that you can't find 10 min to call after a month and a half? Is that right?"
You know what? She's had it. She's had it with his comments, making her responsible for anything that went wrong between them. Zagreus isn't here, he lied to her, and now her dad is all up in her ear yelling at her and for once after all these years, she decides to talk back. Noor does her best to master her trembling voice.
"Well, if you want to put it like this, yes. I'm busy – I genuinely am! Why are you trying to make me feel guilty?" She knows that her voice is wavering and she almost sounds like she's crying, but she doesn't care.
There's a shocked silence on the other side of the phone, her father wondering what made her finally snap after years of manipulation and verbal abuse. "I'm not trying to guilt-trip you," he says. "But just so you know, I didn't sign papers saying that I was the only one responsible to entertain our father-daughter relationship. I have flaws, I am aware, I am not the best dad, but you're not the best daughter either, are you? You're always moping and crying, stressing. Telling lies about Greek gods. That was just the nail in the coffin. Insanity. That's not very motivating, is it?"
Noor swallows thickly, trying to shove her tears all the way back. "Motivating?" she echoes. "How would you even know what kind of daughter I was? You never allowed me to be a child in the first place. But if you need to be motivated to spend some time with me, I get it." She breathes in deeply. "Do you have any idea the kind of anxiety I'm under when you're around? The surge of panic everytime you call? Trying to be the perfect little soldier. Trying to please you, trying to make sure you won't blow a fucking fuse and start screaming in my face that I'm this huge mistake that never deserved your love," she says, crying now, as the words he used when talking to her slip past her lips. "I can't live like this, dad."
Her father huffs, outraged now that she'd ever question his parenting. "I remember that fight," he says, and it pains her that he only views it as that. A fight. "So what, you never said stuff you didn't mean?" There's a silence, Noor doing her best to hold back sobs. "As far as I know, I wasn't that bad. I never slapped you!"
The laugh that escapes her lips is sour, pained. "Do you have any idea how bad you are? For no physical abuse to be the best case scenario?"
Noor can still remember that day. The day all hell broke loose and she saw her father's true face. Things weren't the same, after that.
The linen floor, the tear-stained pillow next to her, and the baby brother she never got to see grow old in her arms, confused as to why their father was yelling and why she was crying.
She shoves the memory deep down. She doesn't want to revisit it, not now, not ever.
Her father is silent over the phone, thinking of the right way to hit where it hurts. "When you've eliminated me from your life – because it seems to be your goal –, you'll realise I'm not the source of all your problems. And you might even regret it."
Without so much as another word, he hangs up.
Noor finds herself in Cairo, staring at her phone, tears falling on the screen telling her that her contact hung up on her. She wonders how she can even cry for a dad she's never had.
Did she deserve it? Was her dad right in any way? People needed motivation to love her. Zagreus had to be stuck with her. Marc and Steven had the soulmate bond. The others left her.
Maybe it was all her. Maybe she was the problem. No matter how much she tried to be perfect, funny, lovable. Something was deeply wrong with her, it must be.
Because how could a father treat his child like that? She just wasn't enough. She never will be.
She's the problem.
She feels a hand wrap around her wrist more than she can see it through the tears, and looks up at Marc. "I told you to leave," she says. She hates being perceived, seen in her vulnerable moments.
Marc forces a smile. "I'm not good at following orders."
He wasn't very good with tears. Never had been. He'd always lose all his means when someone's crying. So he does the first thing he can think of; he tugs her into a tight-hug.
That's all Noor wants. To be held, his arms around her shoulders, letting her shield herself from the world for a short while, where she can pretend like none of this is real.
She sobs against his shoulder, finally releasing the stress of her conversation with her dad, being left by Zagreus, everything that's happened until now, arms winding up around his middle.
She's not a hero, not even a side-kick. She's just human. A human who shoved herself in a complicated situation without thinking it through as much as she should have, and there's no turning back now.
But at least for a short while, none of it is real, and she's okay with that.
Author's Note: i know it's been seen before, but i just love the trope of the main character just being... human in the middle of things that require to be more than that, what can i say?
(i know, no zagreus, forgive me)