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"Goodbye, to all the plans that we made.
No contracts, I'm free to do as I may...
...I can smell you, Zagreus."
"No, you can't," Zagreus said, hurriedly, with his customary cunning.
Clearing his throat in embarrassment, Zag pushed off the floor where he'd been curled up behind a vast urn, hidden from Eurydice's sight. Dusting himself off, he gave the nymph a lopsided grin. "Sup?"
"Hmph. Not like you to linger when you pass through," Eurydice noted, pausing to coo at one of her fragrant blooms before continuing. "Something amiss?"
Zagreus sighed. "The song. That song you're always singing. It sticks in my head a lot, especially when I'm getting ready to... you know. Throw myself against the proverbial brick wall yet again." He pushed a hand through his unruly hair, his usually-amiable countenance cloudy. "Think it's starting to wear on me. This whole... thing."
Eurydice hummed as he spoke, but far from being intrusive, the melody seemed to weave between his words, knitting them together, encouraging further branching, deeper thought. Steam rising from her cauldrons brought soothing scents to his nose, deepening his reverie. He slid back to a seating position. "I mean, I've always been what Father wanted. Father wanted a son. I was a son for him. Father wanted an heir. I prepared my head to bear the weight of a crown. Or, I tried, anyway. I thought this was the first choice I made on my own -- to claw my way to the surface, to find my mother, to... find myself, I guess. But... I'm not even sure it's what I want anymore. Maybe I only want to spite Father. Maybe even this struggle of mine belongs to him, in the end."
Zagreus looked up when Eurydice crouched in front of him, her arboreal hands reaching to cradle his face. "Sweet child. I commend your fight. I sing for you to see the world above this wasteland. But your freedom will not be found there, not until you have found it here." She shifted her fingers to tap gently at his temples. "What you feel in my song, what calls to you, is that inalienable, uncorruptible selfhood. The core of me that dear Orpheus worshipped, but ultimately could not fathom. What even an eternity in Hades' fell realm cannot take from me."
She stood and gestured at her vast array of plants -- life, in the lifeless realm. "This is my will, imposed upon Asphodel. A verdant oasis in a volcanic waste. It is mine and mine alone... but I share it with you, Zagreus, he who would be twice-born. I share it with you because I believe that when you understand this... you will be unstoppable."
Had anyone expressed such ardent belief in him? In his individuality? Twice-born... to breach the forbidding barrier, to emerge into the world of the living, to be created anew. Who would this Zagreus be, who sprawled bloodied and gasping on those shores? Hades' errant son, soul still mired in the Underworld, or...?
"This isn't a punishment, for you," Zagreus realised, looking around at Eurydice's cozy home. "Hades cannot punish you. You simply won't... let him."
Eurydice winked.
Zagreus thought about all he'd learned, was still learning, as he continued to try and fail and try again. He thought about journeys taken on purpose, odysseys wherein the hero and all who crossed the hero's path were changed. He thought about sharing nectar with Sisyphus and trading bad jokes, about looking forward to arguing existentialism with Patroclus, about how Cerberus wagged his tail and grinned slyly (and blinked sleepily, and snuffled curiously, depending on what head you were looking at) every time Zag came huffing and puffing up the stairs to the Temple of Styx. He thought about how every forced return to the House of Hades made the place look slightly different in his changing vision, how he learned new things about his lifelong companions, how seeds of curiosity grew to saplings of empathy in his heart for Achilles, Orpheus, even Megaera.
It was all as it should be. Despite what Hades thought, he was not failing and failing again. He was not being beaten, being cowed, being crushed under the inexorable weight of futility. He was growing, and growing further. He was becoming.
He opened his mouth to try and thank Eurydice, but he couldn't think of the words that would convey his deep gratitude. He hugged her instead, impulsively, and was rewarded with a snort of fond amusement.
Her lilting voice followed him as he hopped the small craft that would take him to whatever awaited, and filled the chambers of his heart with such lightness that he thought he would float all the way up to the Overworld, out of everyone's reach, towards an eternal Sun. "The weight of the world all falls away, in time."