Work Text:
and the car door opened and a man stepped out
/
"You're early," Persephone hissed, eyes lit up with disdain as she watched her husband step from the train car to solid earth. She could almost picture the cracks his feet could cause if he exerted the least bit of force to his steps (he wouldn't, she knew, but she could still picture it). He was early, by at least two months, and they both were well aware of that. Why in the name of hell are you so early, husband? The goddess seethed silently, maybe knowing that she wouldn’t be getting a straight answer in the slightest, no matter what she thought to ask.
"I missed ya," he replied, and held out his hand in what she knew could either take as a plea to come with him or a demand to continue this everlasting arrangement like they were meant to do. She wasn't sure which it was anymore, hadn't been sure about it for at least three hundred years now. When she didn't take a step towards or away from him, when she didn't attempt to close or increase the distance between them, his hand dropped.
She could feel Hermes' eyes, old and tired as her favorite brother was of her always coming and going. She never stayed for long anymore, and she knew without a doubt that it was taking a toll on her friends ; on the mortals with whom she had spent years with, but she also knew that there was nothing she could do about it. Persephone stepped towards her husband with a resigned sigh, and climbed into the train car with all the force of a winter wind.
Her husband said nothing, even as he closed the car door behind them. The ride to their home, to his kingdom, was silent. It was the longest damn train ride of her immortal life.
/
Hades still hadn't said anything, even as they descended the last of the stairs that led into his realm. Then, she asked, with a voice that somehow sounded both curious and annoyed to his ears, "In the coldest time of year, tell me, why is it so hot down here? Hotter than a crucible ; Hades, it ain't right and it ain't natural."
“Lover, you were gone so long, and, Lover, I was lonesome.” He began, and Persephone had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn't so long ago (to her, at least) that he'd called her by her name, not merely Lover or Wife or something of the sort, but it still seemed like many more years than it really had been. "And so, I built a foundry in the ground beneath your feet."
The Goddess of Spring and The Dead and The Underworld shook her head softly, letting her coat drop to the ground. She didn't think she had it in her to respond without the underlying regrets of years gone by seeping through the cracks.
/
Her office is empty now that all the spirits and shades and the sort have gone back to their working in the mines, and there's a half empty glass of bourbon sitting on her desk, so she shakes off the feeling that there's something she really should be doing to stop this whole damn thing before it inevitably gets worse -- and it will get worse, she knows, because it always, always , does. She opens a desk drawer to refill her glass and instead of copious amounts of alcohol meeting her gaze, Persephone is met with the sight of a younger Hades with eyes brighter than any morning sun she ever saw as a child.
She picks up the photograph with fingers that shake as hard as they did when she was young and in love and the taste of fresh freedom rested in the hollow of her throat. It's a simple picture, really -- her husband isn't doing much in it, just looking to the side at something that she can't see but remembers so clearly it's almost like she's back there, in that back room of their old -- their first, from when they were still newlyweds -- house that she hasn't stepped foot in years. Persephone rests the picture on the surface of her desk like she can't bear to hold it anymore and downs the rest of her drink like she's a woman dying of thirst.
She slams her glass onto the desk with enough force to shatter it, and tries not to remember the sight of her oldest son's face as he died.
/
The twins are their only children to be born in the house of her mother. He comes first ; her son is born silent and she fears for all of a moment that he is dead, but then he takes a breath and the world rights itself on its axis and she remembers that even gods -- even gods that are born of the long dead and the recently deceased and the still dying -- take a moment to really come alive. The first thing her son sees, when he opens his eyes for the very first time, is the soft face of his grandmother before she wraps him in a blanket and lays him gently to the side to welcome his sister in the same way.
The girl is born quiet, too, and she waits until Demeter has set her beside her brother before she starts to cry. The sound seems almost out of place in the small room of her mother’s cottage, and it takes Persephone all of ten minutes to find in herself the strength to sit up and ask her mother if she might hold her children now ( she’s tries to ignore the distinct emptiness of the space beside her, the space that should be taken up by her husband ). Hades wasn’t aware the twins had been born yet, and he shouldn’t be, really ; they weren’t due for another month at least. Her mother gently lays her son in her arms, and Persephone shifts her body weight as though that may help her get a better hold on the sleeping babe she’s cradling. “Hey there, love.”
“What’ll you name ‘em?” Her mother asks, voice soft and Persephone feels the bed dip as Demeter takes a seat on the other end of the mattress, the little girl resting easily in her arms, and it takes the goddess a few moments to answer.
“‘M gonna call him Zagerus,” she begins, and doesn’t take her eyes from the crown of her son’s head. "And her name'll be Melione."
The sight of her mother's smile as she presses a soft kiss to the top of her granddaughter's head does something to ease the crushing phantom weight of feeling in her own chest. "Perfect."
/
When Makaria is all of eleven years old, her stark white hair ( a courtesy of her father, because his hair has always looked like it's dusted in snow and ash no matter what age he appeared ) reaches to her mid - back and she takes a pair of gardening shears that her mother kept in the outdoor cabinet and chops it off to her shoulders. Her older brother laughs at the sight of her uneven locks and pushes her gently towards their father's office, where not a soul does anything to stop her from opening the large oak door. Even the Moirai, who watch her with devastatingly blind stares, say nothing as she uses the full weight of her body to shove the doors open wide enough to get through.
" πατέρας ?" The youngest goddess of the underworld says, even though her father is looking directly at her when she walks up to his desk.
Hades raises a single eyebrow at his youngest child and leans back in his chair without taking his eyes from her. It takes a moment for her to realize that he's laughing before the sound actually leaves his mouth. Then, he breathes, "Lord, child, what have you done to your hair?"
"Well," she starts, and she can feel the heat of a sun that doesn't exist down in her father's place spreading across her face and neck. He can see it, too, she bets. "Mama's always complaining that my hair is too long to mess with, like hers is, so I went and made it shorter. I think Meli likes her hair long, but I don't get why. Long hair doesn't feel nice ; it's too heavy."
And she's taking a million miles a minute like her mother did when she was nervous and Hades reaches a hand over his desk to brush the stray bangs from Makaria's face as she shuts her mouth. "Go on home, girl, and we'll even out your hair when I get back, alright?"
Makaria nods slightly, and when she opens the door to leave, she is met with the sight of Thanatos and Hypnos about to knock against the wood. The boys look down at her ; Hypnos runs a hand through his own white hair and grins at her, but Thanatos just smiles and says, "nice haircut, Maka."
She's down the steps before the twins step into her father's office, and when her mother comes home a month later, the woman laughs as the sight of her daughter's hair before pulling her into a tight hug.
/
The boy is screaming so loud that he's sure his father can hear him down there, in his place of factories and machines below the soils of the Earth. His uncle's hand is hot against his face, burning his eyes up from the inside out ( that is, of course, what Zeus intended to do ) and when it is removed, Ploutos Adonius, god of the wealth inside the ground and the things that grow up on the soil, finds that the only thing he could see was darkness. " θείος ? θείος , what have you done to me?"
And the Lord Zeus, husband and king and uncle and brother and tyrant, lets out an ever so slight hum, and his hand comes down on Ploutos' shoulder with a sort of weight that wasn't there before ( he does notice, however, that the heat is gone ). "Ploutos Adonius, of the Agricultural Wealth of Earth, you will give out your riches not by the biases of the world clouding your mind, but you will only go by the actions of man."
He says it like it shouldn't be the first thing he went by, like it wasn't going to be the first thing he went by, and Ploutos feels his hands ( his hands, that which are pale from a lack of real sunlight in his childhood home and that which are scarred from a life digging through the roots of his mother's garden filled with thorns ) start shaking. He stills them by sheer power of will, and tilts his head towards the sounds of his uncle's movement. "Ain't no reason to blind me, Uncle." He says, and there's a moment where the throne room of Olympus, where his grandmother sits ten feet away from him and where his father is not allowed, goes absolutely silent.
"Ain't there?"
"I woulda been fair to them mortals, Uncle. I woulda been right, there was no reason to blind me."
And the Lord Zeus laughs, like the concept of being fair and being right is oh - so - foreign to him that he can not tell that Ploutos is being deadly serious. "You're a god, boy," the king of the sky says, and his voice sounds like the beginnings of a storm, "you ain't ever gonna be fair."
/
The door of his office closes at the same moment he shuts the cabinet, and Hades lets out a breath so ragged it’s a damn wonder that he’d held it in so long. The songbird had just walked out of his office with nothing on her mind but the food she was bound to get sometime soon, after her first day’s shift was over and done, and the Lord of the Underground and the King of the Dead could not find it in himself to step away from the window that looked out to his factories and his Wall. He was getting too old for this, wasn’t he?
He drags a hand down his face as he sits back down in his desk chair, bracing his arms against his knees as he leans forward. It’s been one hundred, two hundred, three hundred and more years since the god of the long dead and the still dying has felt like the world is slipping out from under his iron grip, and for half a second of pure self pity, Hades Aidoneus ( first born son of the mother - made Rhea and the tyrant - overthrown Kronos ) wishes for the presence of his wife. He knows, he knows , that he will not get it -- that he will not get it every again, for as long as he may live, from now until forever -- but he wishes for it all the same.
/
When Spring rolls around again, and the poet in the story is all but dead, there is a boy sitting on the ground out by the railroad tracks. His uncle stands guard over him with a hand braced on his shoulder like the comforting weight of a blanket, while his own hands are pressed flat against the soil, listening. "The train's almost here, Unc. The ground's shaking over it."
And Hermes, god of travelers and traders and thieves, starts to laugh. "That it is, boy."
His hand leaves the boy's shoulder as the train chugs right up to the platform and he descends to open up the train car door for the Lady of Spring. The boy on the ground tilts his head back to the sun with his eyes shut tight and listens to the sound of his mother's footsteps still when she sees him, lounging in the dirt.
Ploutos Adionius, god of the riches below the Earth and the crops that grow above it, gives her a smile, and says, "Hey there, Ma."
"Ploutos," Persephone says, and there's a sad sort of smile to her voice when she speaks his name, "Won't you get up off that ground and give your mama a hug, boy?"
He's up on his feet before she gets finished talking, and there's a sort of force to way he barrels into her, arms going around her middle even though he's just as tall as his father now, and ducks his head against her shoulder. She can't tell if his shaking is from tears or laughter, but she suspects it might be a little bit of both.
"Where have you been, up here? I ain't seen you in years, Love." His mother asks him, and it takes another moment of his head tucked against her shoulder before he finds it in himself to step back and focus his sightless eyes on where he thinks her face to be. She tilts his chin down a bit with the tip of her finger.
"I've been a little bit of everywhere, Mama." He says, and he smiles again like he can't really hell himself. When was the last time he'd spoken to any of his family, much less his mother? "'Course, I don't think anyone takes you very seriously when you can't see them. Them mortals some places think just because I can't see them means that I don't know what they say about me.
"I'm blind, Mama, I ain't deaf." And he pauses, like there's something else he's supposed to say in that moment and he doesn't really know what it is. Then, he asks, "how's Da?" and he hears it in the way her breath almost catches and he feels it in the way the fingers resting against his cheek still for the briefest of seconds.
"Your Da's good. He's working." And her son laughs, like he should've known better than to ask. "'Course he is, Ma. Ain't he always?"
Hermes appears at their sides, then, slinging an arm over his sister and his nephew and grinning down at the Lady of Summer. "Welcome back to the land of the living, sister. It's been awful quiet without you around."
"Glad to be back, brother." She replies, and wraps her own arm around his shoulders, reaching out to ruffle her son's hair. Ploutos smiles again, and his mother laughs.
/
The ends of her white hair are dusted with red from the seeds the god of Death has been throwing at her for the past five minutes, turning it a sudden shade of light pink, and Makaria can barely stay sitting up with the force of her giggles. She catches one in her mouth, finally, and Thanatos grins at her with teeth white as bone. "Took you long enough, didn't it?"
"Be quiet!" She says, and shoves her hands ( stained red like blood or wine or a mix of the two with juice ) against his chest -- he leans forward, with no regard for the fact that she's getting his shirt dirty, and presses his mouth against her cheek with a laugh of his own. "I'd really rather not, πριγκίπισσα , if that's alright with you."
She rolls her eyes fondly and pulls him down with one juice coated hand on the back of his neck to kiss him on the mouth. When he leans back against the tree they've set themselves under, she follows him forward on instinct alone.
"You could, at least, do that somewhere you can't see from the window," comes a voice from the garden's gateway, and Makaria leans her head back until she's looking up at her father and he's upside down, and says, "and, you don't, at least, have to watch us."
Thanatos leans his head forward against her shoulder, shaking with barely silent laughter, as the Lord of the Dead looks down at his youngest daughter with almost a smile and a shake of his head, and turns and goes back into his mansion of stone.
Then, the boy rests his chin on her shoulder and says, "Next time, lover, we're going to my house, not yours." The blessed girl lets out a laugh, and he kisses her again.
/
fin.