For Xolotl, a new case meant late nights at the office, mountains of paperwork and falling back into old habits.

So far, he’s got all three checked.

There’s a stack of financial records from the auditor he has to look through by Friday. He’s already on his sixth (or was it seventh?) cigarette. And a cursory glance at the clock tells him that it’s a quarter past two.

Sighing, he leans back in his chair, eyes squeezed shut, and raises a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. All around him, blue tendrils of nicotine-tainted smoke dance through the air, curling around his hair like dragon’s breath. Good thing there aren’t any smoke detectors in here, Xolotl muses.

The last thing he needs are the sprinklers turning on and drenching all these documents.

He’d actually quit smoking a few centuries ago, way back during the Industrial Revolution when tobacco actually tasted like tobacco. Nowadays, it was all filler, smoke without the buzz. Anyone with the barest scrap of discernment would know that modern cigarettes were nothing compared to a good, hand-rolled cigar from Cabañas.

Still, you get used to it. Hell, if there’s one thing Xolotl has learned over his many, many years of existence, it’s that you can get used to anything, even the bitter tang of tar, anise and menthol. Besides, he kind of liked having something to do with his hands, and smoking was a great excuse for lulls in conversation.

Right now, however, he’s doing it because he needed to, the whole ritual of lighting up and smoking a cigarette, drawing the fumes deep into his lungs —– it calmed him. He isn’t nervous or apprehensive, though, just… concerned. Xolotl has always prided himself on his resourcefulness, on his ability to turn any situation to his advantage. That’s what made him so good at his job, and why his clients were willing to dig deep in their pockets for him to represent them in court.

Rumor was you could never get Salvador Ochoa to sweat because he was always three steps ahead of everyone else in the room.

But even the most consummate professional could be caught off-guard.

When Xolotl opens his eyes again, he’s staring at a cream-colored envelope on his desk. He’d opened it earlier, breaking through the wax seal with a letter opener, but even before he read through what was within, he already had an inkling as to what its contents entailed.

Crushing the remains of his cigarette into an ashtray, he picks up the letter again, drags a nail along the crease where it had been folded. The paper feels rough between his fingers, heavy, but beneath it all, there’s something else.

Something magic.

Weak as it may be, he could still feel it fizzling away under the surface. Every deity left behind their own magical signature, and the Morrigan was no different. Hers felt like… electricity and ozone. The scent of petrichor after a rainstorm. If the seal on the envelope hadn’t been enough of a giveaway — a crow with its wings spread and talons outstretched — Xolotl could have guessed who the sender was without even looking.

And when you received a message from the Morrigan, there was usually only one reason.

He just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

Quietly, he slides the letter back into its envelope and tucks it inside his jacket, casting another look at the clock —– 2:21 A.M. Everyone else had already gone home for the day, and Xolotl was the only one left in the office. That’s how it was, most days. After the final stragglers clocked out around midnight, the whole place would be left to him alone. He doesn’t mind staying late, though. It gives him a little extra time to hone in on specifics, iron out the details, and he likes the quiet.

He stands up then, walking over to the floor-length window that separated his office from the city outside. The streets below are empty, bathed in the orange glow of sodium street lamps. Occasionally, a car will zip by, and Xolotl will stare at it until it disappears into the distance. This high up, they look like toys —– small and utterly insignificant.

…Fuck it.

He could put off preparing for the case for a day or two, but if he had to listen to god-knows-who arguing about god-knows-what at eleven in the morning, he’s going to need a little more than two hours of sleep. And so, trying to ignore the already-growing headache behind his eyes, Xolotl turns back to his desk to click his computer shut, slips a fresh cigarette between his teeth, and prepares for the long drive home.

---

He’s up bright and early the next day —– or the same day, technically, but he doesn’t see the point in being pedantic about such things.

There’s a sense of unease in the air as Xolotl goes through his morning routine. This was the first Conclave they’ve had in, what, eighty-one years? And he can’t stop thinking about what could possibly be important enough to warrant them all coming together again.

(Part of him wonders if it all couldn’t be summarized in an email instead. He’s not exactly looking forward to dealing with the Greeks. Mostly because more often than not, they were the ones causing the problems that everyone else needed to solve. It’s sort of become routine at this point, cleaning up after their messes, and frankly, he’s getting a little tired of it.)

But Xolotl knows as well as anyone that there’s no sense in delaying the inevitable, and so decides to take one last look at himself in the mirror before heading out. He’s wearing one of his cheaper suits, an Alexander McQueen knockoff he’d just gotten back from the dry cleaner’s. It’s charcoal black, cut in a way that’s elegant yet discreet —– just the way he likes it.

Satisfied, he turns to leave, though not before slipping an unopened pack of menthols into his pocket.

The drive to the university is uneventful, filled only with the purr of an engine and the occasional click-click-click of his turn signal. Once he actually gets there, it doesn’t take him long to find the conference room the Morrigan had been talking about in her letter; and already, there seemed to be some sort of commotion going on inside.

Business as usual then.

…The smell of vomit is new, though.

It’s the first thing Xolotl notices when he steps inside, though he doesn’t give the perpetrator more than a brief, withering glance before moving towards the two most familiar faces in the room.

“Tlazōlteōtl. Xōchipilli.” He greets each of them with a nod, and settles down into the seat he’d been assigned. It’s cheap, plastic, and exceedingly uncomfortable. Xolotl supposes it’s a fitting metaphor for their current situation.

“So,” he begins, reverting to his native tongue of Nahuatl, trying in vain to find a position that doesn’t make him feel like he’s strapped to a medieval torture device. He’s hoping Xōchipilli and Tlazōlteōtl might be able to provide some much-needed distraction. “I take it didn’t miss anything important?”

Things were actually going… well?

In fact, things were going so well that Zeus had almost forgotten exactly why his family was such a mess in the first place. He was just happy to see everyone back together again —– Apollo, Athena, Persephone, Comus… Even Ares and Heracles. Hermes, on the other hand, seemed intent on stealing his thunder with a secret stash of gummy worms, but he was in a good enough mood to let it slide.

If he had known baked goods were such a hit with gods and goddesses alike, he would’ve done this sooner.

So yeah, he was pretty damned pleased with himself. For once, he wasn’t going to fuck things up. For once, he would prove to everyone that Zeus, King of the Gods, was not a narcissistic maniac with coping mechanisms more toxic than the ruins of Chernobyl, but actually a pretty okay guy you could totally be friends with.

…Seriously, though. He should’ve known better than anyone than to have such unwavering confidence in himself. Back in his day, such behavior was called hubris, and would earn anyone a swift smack in the face from Nemesis herself.

So it only made sense that the second Zeus started feeling good about himself, started thinking that “hey, maybe this won’t be so bad”, everything began to fall apart.

The first sign of things going south was the arrival of Hera. Technically, she hadn’t done anything but show up, but the look she shot him as she walked in was enough to make whatever words he’d wanted to say die in his throat.

Ex-wife jitters. Classic. He’ll give her some space. She’s clearly not in the mood to talk to him right now.

The second sign was when a man smelling of grease and fish food all but careened into the room, and Zeus noticed that he was looking — pardon the pun — a little green in the gills. But he didn’t have much time to wonder just who the hell this guy was before he started blowing chunks all over his very expensive shoes.

The noise that escapes him then is more of a gasp than a whimper, and it takes a few more moments after that for the man’s question to register.

“They’re Tom Ford, actually.”

Somehow, in that single, horrifying moment, that’s all Zeus can bring himself to say.

Gods, he’s gonna be sick.

No, wait. Throwing up here is a terrible, terrible idea.

Hold it together, asshole. Don’t you dare lose your shit now.

When he starts to lift his foot, the carpet makes sort of a… wet squelching noise that nearly sends him retching again. But through sheer willpower, he manages to swallow it down, and with two trembling fingers, slides off his newly-ruined shoes.

Now what the hell was he supposed to do with these? Throw them out?

But they looked so good on him…

In the end, after what seemed like an eternity of internal deliberation and weighing out the pros and cons, he just dumps the shoes into the lonely, little trash can sitting in the corner of the room. Sure, his shoe guy might’ve been able to scrub them clean, but deep down, Zeus knew that they would never be the same again.

Rest in peace, shoes.

It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Just how fast things can change. A minute ago, he felt like he was on top of the world —– everyone was loving his danishes, nobody was trying to kill each other, and he still had two shoes on his feet.

Now, he’s just standing there, shoeless, toes wiggling in his socks.

What a fucking nightmare.

He’s not even mad, really. Or maybe he is, and his brain was just trying to deal with the shock of it all before moving on to anger. A betting man would put his money on the latter, because if this happened back during Zeus’ heyday, he would’ve already turned whoever was responsible into a pile of electrified ash.

Still, he was trying to change, trying to be less like the murderous tyrant he used to be. And to be fair, he’s sort of distracted trying to figure out exactly who this greasy, pukey man was to really get angry.

That fish smell is familiar, though. And the voice. And the general air of melancholia that hung over him like a funeral shroud.

Where exactly did he remember him from? Gods, it’s just gonna keep gnawing away at him, isn’t it?

He had to find out.

“Hey, uh, don’t worry about the shoes, alright? I think we’ve all had days like these.” He tries for a chuckle, hopes to Cronus it doesn’t sound too much like acting, and reaches out to place a hand on the man’s shoulder, giving it a consoling pat.

“It’s just… You don’t look so good right now. Maybe you should sit down somewhere. And we can talk. About stuff.”