mars /4

It'd felt like being cradled for a moment, the way the current took him down. He remembers that, the content feeling that'd bloomed within him after the fear left. His body had given up, pulled so far beneath the waves that he couldn't even hope to breathe again, so he'd stopped trying. Saltwater engulfed him fully, filling every vacant space within him until there was no longer a distinction between him and the ocean.

Above him, there was a face, blurred by the surface of the water, just staring down at him and then slowly retreating back over the edge of the boat.

And that's it, that's the whole memory.

It sounds fake and sometimes Mars isn't certain how much of that is fact or just filler his mind gave him to cope. It's not like he even remembers the person who dumped him over the edge and he hasn't seen them in the two years since.

Of course Bast asked him.

"You throw yourself in? Couldn't handle aging out?" he'd stated almost rather than questioned.

"No way," Mars had answered so fast, not even thinking about it despite having no way of knowing, "There was a man, probably."

Could have been a woman too, it was hard to remember then, even harder now, two years on. Bastille says he's seen cases like Mars before though, families indebted to some gang and expecting to pay them off when their child volunteers. Then their kid doesn't get reaped or doesn't step up so they have to trade something for the debt.

It's twisted and backward, but it's just how things are.

Bast told him that he found him face down in the surf, seaweed wrapped around his legs and his skin cold. He should have been dead but wasn't and normally Bast would have just fixed that, kept the scales balanced but he'd fished Mars out.

"You've been asleep four days," was the first thing Mars had heard when he'd woken up in a little house at the end of the beach, "So I'll call you Mars. Fourth day, fourth district, fourth planet."

Mars couldn't argue, his name had been lost on him.

And The Styx hasn't had such a good bartender in a long time, not since Nino. Mars takes the graveyard shift, every night from eight to four in the morning. He watches the sunrise and cooks himself dinner, only to sleep the day away and do it all again.

"It'll come back to you, the memories you've lost," Bast promised him, but they haven't.

And Mars sits on the beach on his days off, waiting for a moment of recognition in the face of those that walk by.

But there's none.