Alex stood behind the bar gently wiping down a heavy glass stein that a patron had up until recently been using. That was until Lysis had arrived and ordered all soldiers back to their barracks. She’d implemented a new policy. No drinking after sundown. The soldiers were used to spending most of their nights in the bar and had been ignoring the policy. That was until Lysis turned up and implemented it in person. Even with bellies full of ale, none of the soldiers were willing to openly defy Lysis.

Alex was partially relieved. It was nice to have a bit of peace and quiet. Dealing with a hundred or so rowdy soldiers night after night was starting to strain his normally placid demeanour. On the other hand, it felt good to be busy and it felt good to have the most successful tavern this side of the Empire.

Now there were only three patrons left. An old couple sitting silently in a corner, slowly supping their drinks while holding hands under the table. They barely uttered a word to each other and they seemed to like it that way. The most they would do was glance to the other and smile gently. They seemed to be simply and content. It was bitter sweet to watch. He found wrapped in the warm glow of the deep love he had for Rixie as he watched the pair. The same love they clearly felt for each other. But there was also the nagging, stinging feeling that he couldn’t sit and hold Rixie’s hand and have a drink with her. He couldn’t even sit in her hand without having a full blown freak out.

“Get you another?” Alex asked the lonely patron sitting at the bar toying with her empty glass.

Lysis pushed the glass and a coin towards him and nodded. Alex duly obliged and filled the glass from the hand drawn pump behind the bar then returned it to Lysis.

“So, you come to my bar, kick out all my customers and then spend the rest of the night propping up the bar. What gives?” Alex asked in his tried and tested barman’s tone.

“Just doing my part to support local business.” Lysis lifted the glass to her lips and drained a quarter of the stein in a few quick gulps.

Alex picked up another wet stein and began to dry it off.

“I find that hard to believe. I’ve never got the impression that you really care for bars. Something is eating you.” Alex replied.

Lysis looked up at Alex and narrowed her eyes.

“Ok, eating you was the wrong choice of words given your history but I recognise the look. What’s bothering you?”

Lysis supped her drink again.

“I just wanted to sit, by myself, in a familiar place.” She said.

Alex placed the dry stein on a shelf with a row of identical glasses and started to dry another. “I can relate to that. I came here to get away with the big, bad world. In here my biggest problems are figuring out how to cook a hundred chicken wings at once.”

“What troubles you have.” Lysis smiled.

“I didn’t think you’d be familiar with the inside of bars. I pictured you as being the type that drinks nothing but pureed vegetables.”

“You don’t know me. Your spot behind that counter used to be my spot.” Lysis countered.

Alex’s interest was piqued. “Really!? I can’t really picture you as a barmaid. Did you have your hair braided and wear frilly dresses too”

Lysis laughed and finished her ale and pushed the glass and another coin towards Alex.

The barman lifted the glass and started to fill it. “This one’s on me…” He said hoping this would inspire Lysis to open up a bit more.

“Fifteen years ago I was a young maid. I needed work. And one job a pretty, naive young lady can always get is serving filthy old men their ale.” Lysis said with not a little disgust.

“Sounds like it wasn’t your sort of thing. Why’d you do it?” Alex pushed Lysis her refreshed glass.

Lysis took a swig. “No choice. My parents died. We had no other family. I left school and started work. It was either that or starve.”

Alex nodded. “That must have been tough. I lost my Dad when I was a kid. I barely got through it. I don’t think I could imagine losing both my parents.”

“I had no choice. If it was just me I’d probably have just given up…but I had my sister to take care of.”

“Always a good motivator.” Alex poured himself a beer and pulled up a stool opposite Lysis.

She nodded. “It was. She was much cleverer than me. I wanted her to stay in school so she could learn to be a bookkeeper like our father.”

“So you got a job here? What was it like back then? It was a dive when I found it.”

“Not much better. No matter how much I scrubbed it was always filthy. The owner didn’t care as long as he got his take. He used to keep the prices low to bring in as many customers as possible. He’d water down the mead to make up for it. Cheap mead attracted the dregs of Atlantis.” Lysis grumbled and took another gulp.

“That doesn’t sound like a pleasant working environment.”

Lysis shook her head and laughed. “That wasn’t even the bad part. These men were scum when they walked in and they got worse the more they drank. Their hands would start to wander. They’d put their hand round my waist after one drink, squeeze my ass after two…after half a dozen…well I’m sure you can imagine…”

Alex grimaced. He found himself lost for words.

“The owner didn’t care. As far as he was concerned I was part barmaid, part whore. The rest of the girls didn’t mind. They were happy to sell their bodies. I was not.” She took another gulp of ale.

“Lysis I…”

“At first I just dodged them when they tried to grab me. It was easy given how drunk they usually were. Every now and again one caught me and I’d hit him until he let me go. Soon I learnt the spots to hit to drop a man with one blow.” Lysis slammed her fist into the counter top for effect. “One day three drunks cornered me in the alley behind the tavern. I wasn’t scared, I couldn’t be scared. I was just so angry that they thought they could do this.”

Lysis smiled and took a big swig from her glass. “I remember asking the Goddess to bless me and to be at my back and then it got a little blurry. I remember swinging my broom with every bit of strength I could muster. I kept swinging and swinging and when I came to my broom was broken and the men were a bloody mess on the floor.”

She paused.

“Wow…that’s awful. How old were you?” Alex was hanging on her every word.

“Sixteen. After that I was terrified. I ran home and hid, crying in a cupboard, scared Amelia half told death. The Watch turned up the next day…I thought they were there to take me away. Instead they asked me to join them. They were impressed I’d dispatched three known violent offenders by myself. And that was that. I became a member of the Atlantis Guard, sworn to protect all in and out of her walls. It was the best decision I ever made.”

Alex nodded and drank some of his ale. He was silent for a moment, awed by the sacrifices that Lysis had been willing to make for her sister. Not that he couldn’t understand the motivation. Alex wondered how his own sister was faring without him… by now she’d be what? Twelve? Thirteen?

How long had he been gone anyway?

The young man shook himself before taking another sip of his drink. “That’s quite a story. How’d you end up as Captain then?”

“Nuh uh.” Lysis wagged her finger “I told you my story about this hole, now you tell me how you ended up here.”

Alex felt a little queasy. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to open up. Especially to someone who was essentially a stranger. His eyes followed the old couple as they wandered out of the bar hand in hand.

“I’m not sure if I’m ready to talk about it…”

“Nope!” Lysis jumped off her stool and pushed herself over the bar and started to refill her glass. Alex was impressed with how well she could pull a pint. “I told you mine, now you tell me yours.”

Alex sighed. She was right. He looked over to her as she settled onto a stool beside him. “I…I haven’t really talked about it with anybody.”

“All the more reason to. We have a saying here, demons fear the light and thrive in the dark…You should talk about what you are hiding.” Lysis countered.

“I suppose you’re right…I’m in love with a Titan…I believe you’re familiar with her.” He started.

“Zara?”

Alex snorted into his ale. “No, she’s very nice, but I’m not interested in taking a number. Think taller.”

“The warrior goddess? The giant among giants?” Lysis stared agog.

“Well I just call her Rixie…and Xena when I want to annoy her…”

“You are friends?” Lysis asked.

Alex nodded. “Started out that way, well technically I started as her pet. Then we became friends and after I kicked Trell’s ass it became much, much more. We’re in love. Like, stupidly, madly, do all sorts of crazy shit for each other, in love.”

“And she isn’t bothered by the…height difference? I know I prefer taller men.” Lysis interjected. “Is that why you’re here? She rejected you?”

“No, no!” Alex waved his hands. “It’s my issue. I…I was helping her to get information on a criminal…I was caught…” Alex raised a shaky glass to his mouth and took a drink.

“Human criminals?” Lysis asked hoping she was right.

Alex just stared at his drink. Lysis shuffled closer. She’d seen that look of dozens of faces as of late. It was hard to miss.

“It was just one woman…one woman…” Alex stammered and took a drink.

“Not just a woman…”

“She did terrible things to me. Inhuman things. Broke my body and threw me out with the trash and left me to die.” Alex gulped and pressed his fingers into his palms over and over again.

There was a long silence between the pair. Both took large swigs from their glasses and stared at the bottom once they had been drained.

“They killed her…” Lysis eventually spoke immediately grabbing Alex’s entire attention. “Khalin and his band of cultists…they did inhuman things to her, too…broke her body and what was left wasn’t recognisable as my sister…”

Tears flowed freely down Lysis’ cheeks but she didn’t weep or make a sound. She just silently cried. Alex placed a hand on her shoulder and stood up.

“I swore to protect this city…” Lysis’ voice tripped over itself “…and I couldn’t even protect my own sister.”

Alex said nothing. He dipped under the counter of the bar and pulled out a large bottle of clear liquid and a set it on the counter top with a thud before retrieving two small glasses.

“This is vodka. An Earth drink. I’ve just perfected the recipe. I was planning on keeping it for the right time.” He filled the two glasses. “But I think we deserve this.”

Alex raised the glass in air.

“Na zdrowie” he said and then downed the glass.

“Nas-drov-ya” Lysis repeated back and did the same.

****

“Whoa!” Alex lurched forward doing his best to support the swaying Lysis with his still recovering legs. “Careful, you’re go’na fall o’vr.”

Alex wasn’t entirely sober himself but was arguably a lot more with it than Lysis.

“Am ok! I can stand! I’m a practiced rider n’ fighter! I can climb stairs!” Lysis slurred as Alex picked her up off the stairs.

“Keep goin’. Right foot…left foot…right foot…rig….no left!” Alex spoke slowly as he tried to keep the stairs in focus. They swung round the top bannister of the stairs, stumbled forward through a door and landed with a small bounce on Alex’s bed.

“This isn’t my bed! This is your bed!” Lysis spoke with some indignation.

Alex pushed himself up. “Is the guest bed. You’re staying here. I’ll sleep out there.” Alex pointed roughly in the direction of one of the inn’s guest rooms.

“Ok…” Lysis nodded already half asleep.

Alex stood, swaying for a few seconds watching the mighty and feared Captain of the Watch start to snore. He leaned over and pulled the covers over her.

“Night Lysis…” He said as he stood up.

Somewhere between ninety degrees and zero degrees Alex lost his baring and kept going. He kept going all the way until he found himself flat on the floor.

“Uggggh.” He groaned as he looked up and out the door to the room about ten feet from where he was. The room that contained his intended bed for the night. “Too far…here’s good.” He mumbled and slipped off into a deep sleep.

****

Lysis was an early riser. More than a decade of early morning drills, both as a cadet and an instructor had her body strictly conditioned to wake just as the sun peaked over the hills in distance. Every morning for nearly the last fifteen years, whether she was in barracks, on a mission out to forest or protecting caravans she would be up with the birds.

The Captain of the Watch rose slowly from the pillow, and clutched the temples of her head. It ached. She’d taken blows to the head from men twice her size and it hurt less than this. This was like she had a full blown Titan male smashing at the inside of her temples. She could hear ringing in her ears. It took a second before she realised where she was.

“Alex…” she groaned, realising just how parched she was.

“Alex!” she called louder and winced as the volume of her own voice caused her head to ache further.

“No…no talking.” Alex spoke without moving from his prone position on the floor.

“What have you done to me…?”

Alex slowly pushed himself up from the floor only to give up when he got half way. “It’s not my fault…it was the Russians…I swear.”

“You are a fool of a man…though clearly wise enough not to attempt to take advantage of me.” Lysis slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Not wise. Just in love.” Alex repeated his attempt to get up, this time with marginally more success. “What’s that noise?”

Lysis rubbed the sleep from her throbbing eyes. “That would be the ringing in my ears.”

Alex cocked his head. There was definitely noise. “Then why can I hear it?”

Lysis sat up. He was right. There was noise. Lots of noise. She stood up and stumbled towards the window. The noise was nearly deafening. She looked out the window into the street. It was thronging with people. People who were shouting, screaming, pushing and shoving all in one direction, towards the main gate of Atlantis. Behind which stood a rather panicked looking Zara who was holding the gate shut with all her might.

Lysis felt panic rise in her. It was clearly long past morning. Long past when she was due on duty and the city was apparently falling apart around her. She did her best to control herself, to use her training and practiced discipline to bury the panic. Try as she might it kept rising. It took a second until she realised. It wasn’t panic. It was something totally different.

“Oh man, all over the floor…” Alex watched, disgusted. “It’s like I’m back in college…”

(Cheers to JS for the edit)