Work Text:
No.
No.
The realm around Artemis shuddered and stilled. She heard her heartbeat pound in her ears. The images she held in her trembling hands were blurred, of course, but the people in them - despite any pixelation or black bars placed at jaunty angles - the people, they were unmistakable.
The bed sheets with the little flecked print Artemis had picked out for her spare bedroom were unmistakable.
(The tears. Unmistakable.)
No.
It couldn't be. She took a steadying breath: in, and out. The world breathed with her, the pulse of the realm shuddering like the feel of a living thing beneath her hands. She would do what had to be done. She always did.
Her hands, carefully rehearsed in their steadiness, found her cellphone. Her clumsy fingers unlocked it on the second attempt, and scrolled through her contact list until she found her target.
She steeled herself and hit dial.
“Artemis,” the voice on the other end of the phone breathed. It sounded thick, heavy with crying.
“In my house.”
“What - what do you mean?”
“I mean you fucked my brother, in my house, under my roof. What do you think I mean?”
The silence was tangible. It stretched out between them, stagnating in static. The fuzz on the line seemed to grow louder in the void of conversation, ululating and crackling with fervour until finally, Persephone spoke.
“How dare you?”
“How dare I? How dare you? You made a promise, you took our scholarship, you were staying under my roof!”
The thumping static on the line garbled and clipped the response. It was definitely louder. It hissed, electric in her ear.
“What?”
“Sorry, hold -
“just get -
“have -
“needs to -
“me on the line, Hades -”
Artemis laughed, despite herself. “Are you for real, Persephone?” Her skin prickled; her stomach roiled. This betrayal was unspeakable. “Are you with another man when pictures of you - a supposed Eternal Goddess of Maidenhood, might I add - have just been leaked? Pictures of you, fucking my brother. So you not only broke your vow, but you let him have a keepsake that someone else has clearly gotten hold of. How fucking stupid can you be?”
“I’ve sent him out of the room.” Her voice was quiet. “Is the line better for you now?”
“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Don’t you think you owe me an apology? You were supposed to be one of ours!”
“One of yours.” Persephone laughed bitterly. She heard a shuddering, steadying intake of breath. “I’m not the one who should be apologising.”
“You’ve got some fucking nerve, kid, I swear -”
“No, you listen.” The words were sharp, authoritative. Artemis found her jaw had clicked shut before she had the chance to question it. Surprising. “This happened, under your roof, at the hands of your brother. You know, Mama only said I could live with you because she’d heard the stories of how you protect the innocence of your acolytes.” Her composure gave way, and the young woman sniffled on the other end of the line. “I was supposed to be safe with you.”
Artemis clung to her last shred of hope. “You’re a liar.”
Persephone was openly sobbing now. “A liar? If you think I wanted this, then you’re a fucking fool. Since I’m not one of yours anymore, don’t call me again - and you’d better find your brother before one of mine does.”
Artemis threw her phone with gusto into the cushions of her couch. It landed with a dull thump against the upholstery and lay indolent, face up - a picture of her and her brother glowing blithely.
She snatched the thing back up and opened her camera roll, retracing her own steps through time. Tracking Persephone and Apollo.
Here - movie night, with her brother one side, and Persephone on the other. (Strained smile. Nervous laughter. Feigned excuses of ‘forgetting notes at a classmate’s house’)
Here - a dinner out at a restaurant, in celebration of some dumb festival. (She’d worn dowdy clothes that night - a huge hoodie, unwashed hair - and enthusiastically encouraged Hermes to sit in the vacant seat opposite her.)
Here - Apollo’s car. (Oh, Gaia - she looked frightened in that one.)
A predator in their midst, picking off the vulnerable from within the herd. From right under her nose.
Maybe Apollo does think he’s the better hunter , she thought.
She paced her living room, yanking her hair up into a tight ponytail, pinning her fringe roughly away from her face. She needed to think.
A little tug at the back of her thoughts pulled her into herself. She found herself drawn, unwillingly, to her purpose. To what the mortals look to her for. Not just for blessings on a good hunt - for what that stands for, and all it signifies. For the continuation of their line. For their families. For the protection of all - especially the future. Their young.
And what was Persephone, all of girlish nineteen, if not the young of Olympus?
What was Persephone, if not truly the most innocent among them all?
Artemis picked up her bow and quiver from the hallway and slipped into her boots. She closed her eyes and listened - tracking the pulse of the world, and drawing on a trail that shone iridescent in the air before her, a similar quality to her own.
“You’ve done a beautiful job of it tonight, brother of mine.”
He jumped fresh out of his skin and whirled to face her, his fear quickly transforming to anger, then irritation, and finally landing on smug indulgence.
“Artie. You got me that time,” he admitted, tucking his cellphone into a pocket inside his mortal realm attire. She frowned, indicating it with a disapproving glance. He shrugged. “What? There’s none of them around, they’re all watching the spectacle and praising me up for it.” He spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. “Honestly, after I’ve sent it on its descent, the finale sort of writes itself.”
She sat in front of the fire, warming the soles of her shoes. “Sit down here next to me, little bro.”
He obeyed her.
Artemis laughed gently, indicating the blade at his waist. He smiled and unfastened it from its sheath, tossing it to her. She caught it by the handle, measuring its balance, reading the inscription. “I can’t believe you’ve still got this. I had almost forgotten I gave it to you.” She kicked dust into the fire, watching tiny hairs and twigs catch and burn in the flames. “Want to explain those photos to me?”
He laughs. He’s not even in the slightest bit ashamed. “Honestly, I’d rather not talk about that with my sister. It’s sort of between Persie and I, don’t you think?”
“So she’s what, your girlfriend now?”
“Something like that, I guess. Why?”
“Cause I spoke to her earlier on tonight and she didn’t sound too happy to me.”
He smirked, leaning back against a fallen trunk behind him. “She’s just embarrassed ‘cause everyone’s saying she’s a slut. She’ll come around. They always do.”
“Who's calling Persephone a slut?”
He shrugged. “Look, I’m not saying it’s right, Artie. It’s just - what people do, alright? I know it’s not exactly your topic, so you don’t really understand it. I get it. It’s a complicated situation.”
“It seems pretty clear cut to me, Apollo. Either you say that you want it or you don’t. And I don’t believe she did.”
Apollo snorted derisively, the contempt twisting his handsome features, and she knew. Deep in her bones, the blood of her blood, the flesh of her flesh, he did this thing to her innocent little friend. Persephone was one of hers. “This just goes to show that you really don’t get it. It’s so much more complicated than that. No doesn’t always mean no. Sometimes it means ‘I want to, but I’ve got a boyfriend,’ sometimes it means ‘I want to, but I don’t want to ruin my reputation.’ They always give it up in the end. Persie was the same - in fact, she was easier than most. Her ‘no’ turned into an ‘okay’ in seconds, honestly, Artemis. You had her all wrong when you said she was a good girl, trust me.”
Her voice was small, afraid. “Okay and yes mean two very different things, Apollo.”
He seized her weakness. Predator. “She gave it up to me. That’s what girls like her always do. You know that - remember what you said about Callisto.”
She bristled, protesting, frightened. “That was different - I was younger then, I didn’t understand -”
“No, it’s now that you don’t understand. Then you knew right from wrong. You’ve let these nobody, know nothing bitches get under your skin, Artie.” He reached over and grasped her arm firmly, imploring. “You know me better than that. Come on.” He leaned over towards her, eyes glinting animalesque in the moonlight, his huge physical presence dominating the space between them and she knew the ancestral fear of her mothers and sisters and nieces for the truth that it was and cowered like a prey-thing.
The baying of hounds from the forest behind them startled them both from their performance, and Artemis recollected her true role.
In her wilful blindness to his predatory nature, Artemis had near forgotten her own. She, too, was a hunting creature.
When she spoke again, her voice whispered from five places at once. “In my house, Apollo.”
“She’s nobody.” His grip on her arm did not falter, squeezing harder. “Forget this fucking nonsense and listen to what I’m telling you.”
“Under my roof,” the breeze sighed, sonorous and disorienting. His head craned to locate the sound, and Artemis felt herself lulled into the heartbeat of the cosmos again, time slowing and elongating, a skill she had used again and again to send a single shaft into the eye of a stag, to kill it instantly, to send it on its way peacefully and painlessly. A skill she now drew upon, gifted to her for kindness, and used now for a sort of barbed kindness, a kindness less done to her present companion and more done to any of his future companions.
She bent back her brother’s index finger until it broke.
His howl of fury yanked her back into the ebb and flow of real time, and he cradled his injured hand to his chest, spitting furious oaths and curses at her as she leapt to her feet.
“She was a virgin, a girl, one of mine. ”
“You crazy bitch, you’ve - fuck! It’s actually fucking broken!”
“She was mine,” Artemis hissed.
“Yeah?” He affixed her with a steely gaze, a snarl splitting his face in a vague approximation of a smile, “well, now she’ll always be mine , and those photos I took mean everyone knows.”
“This is your problem. You’ve always wanted to be known, Apollo.” A distant, dim part of her psyche recognised this was not the reason she should be angry - and yet. “You’ve always felt you didn’t deserve to live in my shadow. To be the better hunter, to be more well regarded by those in power, to take what was mine. If you’re so worthy, prove yourself.”
“You won’t fight me, Artie.”
“I don’t need to.” She whistled, trilling her tongue. The shrill note shuddered its way through the trees and her dogs heeded her call, emerging into the clearing. “Fight them.”
His hand reached for his belt, to unfasten the loops that held his knife in place - the knife that Artemis still held in her hand. He glared at her, backing up as the dogs advanced.
She remembered how, as a child, he was always adamant of the right thing to do. He had oftentimes fooled her into agreeing with him, or doing as he had suggested, as his declarations had been so sure and earnest. More often than not, he had been wrong.
And he was wrong now, as he turned his back and ran from her hounds. They gave chase, relentless on his heels, and even with the sure, fleet feet of a hunter, they would catch him. She gave chase through the forest, the clearing long behind them, breath tearing from her as she pounded her feet against the earth and tasted the sticky scent of blood in the back of her throat. She keened and howled, more wild creature than woman, a wail of abject delight bursting forth from her as finally, a hound toppled the god before her.
Once he was on the ground, there was little he could do. They descended, jaws clamping on his flesh and tearing, their teeth rending flesh from bone. The bloodlust sang in her veins. She was on her knees before him, entirely part of the pack, watching them tearing, shredding, immune to the wailing of the prey beneath them as they had been so many times before. Her hands reached for the meat beneath her -
Thunder clapped and the forest illuminated. The voice of Zeus boomed, commands ringing in her ears, and she called off the pack. They fled, unwilling to protest themselves the claimants of the spoils to the king of kings.
She knelt between the supine body of her brother and her king. She distantly recognised the flecks of golden blood on her as belonging to him - spatter from the dogs alongside her, who had so readily made room for her alongside them.
Artemis was not a wild creature. She was quietly glad that Zeus had appeared in time for her to recognise that.
His instructions echoed hollowly in her ears as he tended to Apollo, lifting him bodily over one shoulder and simply shimmering out of view. The forest was deep, dark, and terribly quiet.
Silence stretched out for agonising moments until she recognised the deliberate sounds of someone light of foot, intentionally making themselves heard.
The behemoth form of Hades sat next to her on the ground, saying nothing, but covering her in a blanket. She found herself, taking herself quite by surprise, leaning against his arm. He patted a hand reassuringly, and sat with her in the gloom.
Sunrise was meant to be only an hour or two away.
It was going to be a very long night.