Seeming to smile.

[i]Seeming[/i] to smile.

The words lodge in her mind like a thunderbolt, sizzling and electrifying everything around it, turning mental pathways blindingly bright.

How often had [i]she[/i] seemed to obey? Sat with comrades who seemed to smile? All eying each other, each terrified in their own way that the other was a spy? That one wrong word would leak and filter and climb to the Emperor's ears? Always, on opening up, on showing trust, that explosion of relief? Of "oh thank the gods, we can talk?" 

Oh gods, what must they think of [i]her?[/i] A figure of myth, standing ever behind Molech, and quick to obey his orders? Always obedient, always fierce, always waiting for the command to kill? Who, on looking on her, would think of her as anything but seeming to smile?

Brothers and sisters, wheeling and fighting and dying above her.

How many of them actually want this? Who among them are simply following orders? Swept along, inexorably, by the will of Molech? Going along with things, as have the floods of Poseidon and the Hermetics, because the cost of resistance is too high?

She swallows hard, and tries to line up the words in the right order. How do you explain that for days, you've done your best to make sure you wouldn't be hurt if they died? Done your level best to avoid names, ignore markings, see them as nothing but tools so that if you're called on to murder them, it won't sting? That her primary concern was not to help them or know them, but to figure out how they might get in the way? 

Slowly, she joins Zeus in staring out the window.

"I… I have brought shame on myself, Thunderer. I was so focused on myself, I blinded myself to how my family was hurting. If I can turn them from him--help them realize how he harms them--then that robs him of his power. And with no Father Molech telling them what to be, they can discover what [i]they[/i] want themselves to be."

The lump in her throat is making it a bit hard to talk.

"But how can I lead them where I have not gone? How can I ask them to turn from Molech when he bids me slaughter all who oppose him? Even if they all turn from him, he will yet have one soldier."