Thursday, July 2, 2009

For Tress, everyone else disregard!

June decides to stay in Sanctuary, having no where else to do. Athena offers her a position training new Saints and she figures she can be closer to Shun. She’ll spend a few chapters getting used to Sanctuary and upping her confidence a bit. When she finally gets bold enough, the Gold Saints are revived by Persephone in apology for Hades’ actions.

She’ll see Aphrodite and remember the anger and pain at losing her home land. It makes her think of Shun, and she decides to grab her chance at being with him before she loses him too. When she tells him how he feels, he confesses that he loves her as a friend and sister, but nothing more. Heartbroken and angry, she runs off.

Shaina and Marin try to talk to her about it but they can’t quite seem to pull her out of her slump. It’s when one of her students gets hurt that she realizes she’s being rather selfish by being angry and not paying attention to her duties. She visits her student in the infirmary and promises to be a better teacher, then stops by to see Shun to apologize for how she treated him. They decide it would be best to keep their distance for a while so they can both concentrate on themselves.

Meanwhile, Aphrodite notices June being rather sad and reflective one night on a hill and wonders who she is and why she feels so sad even though he can’t see her face. He decides to ask Asterion since he’s psyhic and must know, and he tells him who she is. He figures that her sadness is due to his actions, which it partly is, and so he tries to approach her one night when he’s feeling particularly guilty and they’re both alone. She yells at him to stay away, telling him that she hates him. She stalks off, leaving Dite even more depressed.

He’ll see her training her students a few days later in the woods since she’s used to training in different environments cause she’s from Andromeda Island, and afterwards Dite approaches her to compliment her on her training. She tells him she has nothing better to do, as all she’s left with is the remnants of her past. He tells her he’s the same way, and ironically enough, they’re both trying to move on. He asks her if she’ll always hate him, and she replies that she doesn’t know, asking in turn if he’ll ever not hate himself. He replied that he has no answer for that either, and that they both have a ways to go, but he feels she can do it because she’s a strong woman, inside and out. He leaves her with that, her anger at him deflated.

Within the next few months, word spreads that Aphrodite began requesting to accompany Athena on her business trips, rumored to be his attempts at redemption. (I want him to possibly get hurt protecting her somehow but I can’t think of how.)

The crowds gather a few months later as one of June’s students, Apollo, is trying for the Lyra Cloth, which was also recovered by Persephone. Aphrodite is there as well, and sees June and Shun next to each other chatting and is glad to know that both of them have seemed to move on and grow in the past few months. After he wins, he approaches June to congratulate her. He tells her that he did his best to avoid her so that she could have her time, but he wanted to ask her some questions and talk about a few things with her as part of his own journey. She agrees to meet him in his temple for dinner one night.

She goes a few nights later, and he asks her what happened from her perspective and asks how she wound up at Sanctuary. He realizes she’s gone through a lot and begins to rather admire her for it. She asks him how he’s been and he begins to talk about how he’s been trying to make amends for his actions, that he only did it out of self-preservation, that in a way it was out of fear and that isn’t something beautiful, so he had to change that within himself. She find herself admiring that.

She says that to him, and it makes him smile. When he walks her out, he stops her and says that that she too has changed for the better, like a blossoming flower, and hands her a rose. He tells her to stop by whenever she wishes, and that he’d like to see her again. She tells him she’ll think about it.

She’s hanging out with Marin two days later and Marin asks why she went up the mountain. She tells her about her night with Aphrodite, and Marin suggests that perhaps her heart had softened for him more than she realizes. June doubts that and gets a little defensive, but it leaves her thinking. Meanwhile, Aphrodite is BSing with DeathMask when DM asks if he has anything new going on besides his prissy flowers. He says nothing, but the look in his eyes makes DM admit that he’s noticed his eyes on June. He warns him that she’s not going to go for him in the end because she’ll probably never get past what he did, but Aphrodite says it isn’t that easy. DM suggests that Dite has fallen for her, which Dite can’t really deny. DM tells him that he’s just going to hurt himself in the end, but Aphrodite can’t help but think that something big could come of it if he can make it work.

That night, June is walking and thinking about things, and Dite spots her. He asks her what’s on her mind and if she needs someone to talk to, but she tells him she can’t because she’s confused about a few things, one of them being him. He comes up behind her and puts his hands on her arms, telling her he feels the same way and he wants a chance to show her the real him, rather than the pretty-boy egotistical child everyone takes him for. She turns to him and asks how he’s going to prove that, and he runs a rose along her cheek and asks if she’d allow him to show her. She nods and he kisses her, sparking something both of them didn’t expect. June reflects in her mind that she’s amazed at how far things have come, and they both for the first time since Hades’ demise can’t wait to see what the future brings.