Chapter Text
Doubt. Every last step, he doubts. He doubts she is with him. He’d abandoned her, so she’d signed her life away. And could he blame her? Why wouldn’t she stay in Hadestown, where she’d always have a bed to fall into and a fire burning at the hearth?
Even if she wanted to, she could not leave. Hades had said so himself. She’d watch him abandon her all over again. He leaves alone. No footsteps, just the sound of his voice and the blooming bouquet of carnations in his hands.
He stops. “Eurydice?” he calls. No answer. His shoulders sink. He turns.
Her mouth moves. No sound escapes. He grabs her and holds on tight, but the world drags her away. She looks at him with sunken eyes, one last time, as she’s ripped out of his arms.
He slams his guitar against a rock. The strings snap with a twang. Orpheus sinks to his knees. He wants to cry. Scream. Hit something. His throat aches from singing. Singing that damn song he never wants to hear again. The melody that lost him Eurydice. He hadn’t even heard her cry out to him. Just the foolish sound of his own voice.
He leans against a rock. The surface is so close. Just inches out of reach. He doesn’t want to see it. It’s nothing without Eurydice. She was the world. And now... Orpheus closes his eyes.
Hades will take him eventually. He’ll see her again, lost and hopeless, her eyes all cloudy. He isn’t sure he wants to find her. To see her. Gone.
...
He wakes. “And spill a drop for Orpheus,” someone sings, distantly. “Wherever he is now.” The bar, he realizes. He lays in his old bedroom. He rises unsteadily to his feet, draped in a thin nightgown. His guitar sits on his nightstand, painstakingly restrung by a hand not his own. He can’t stand to look at it.
He stumbles down the stairs. Persephone sits at the bar, sipping a glass of wine. Orpheus slips behind the counter and takes the bottle. He tips his head back and finishes it in a single sip. Persephone looks up from her alcohol. “Orpheus. Go back to bed,” she orders, as if she’d known where he’d been all along.
He exhales, shakily, says nothing. He leans against the counter, his body aching from the walk. “Hermes’s orders. You’re hurt, Orpheus. The workers hurt you.”
“I don’t care.” His voice is raspy when he speaks. “I want her back.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know. You aren’t sorry. You let him have her,” he accuses. He knows he’s wrong. It’s his fault, not Persephone’s.
“I begged him to let her go.”
“You failed,” he snaps.
She sighs. “I’m getting something to eat,” he announces. “Tell Hermes... no, don’t tell him anything.”
He limps to the supply room, noting his leg is wrapped in bandages. Had he fallen? Been kicked? He can’t remember. No, he could if he tried. He doesn’t care.
Orpheus searches the room, discovering an old table cloth, moth-eaten. Good enough. He opens a crate. Food to sell at the bar. It must’ve cost a fortune. He dumps it onto the cloth and ties it up by the corners. He stuffs a single pot and a box of matches into the bundle and rises to his feet, hauling it over his shoulder. His legs nearly buckle under the weight.
Persephone doesn’t look up when he passes her in the bar. He leaves his sack at the door and hauls himself back upstairs for reasons unknown to him. He finds his guitar and habitually slings it over his back, pulls the blankets off his bed and marches back downstairs, as quietly as he can manage. Still, Persephone doesn’t move. He takes his bundle of supplies in his arms and shuts the front door behind him.
For a moment, he regrets not leaving a note. Maybe something to remind Hermes that the blame does not fall on his shoulders. But the bar fades beyond the horizon behind him and he knows it’s too late now. He can’t bear to turn back.
He feels the chill on the air. Winter is coming and spring has hardly arrived. When the sun sets, the temperature drops further. His injured leg is sore from walking. He gathers some twigs, strikes a match, and takes a seat beside his meager fire. He draws out some crackers from his sack of food and eats a few. It’s not filling. He pulls his blankets around him and falls asleep, shivering beneath the stars.
The morning is only colder. His leg aches too much to get far. He leans against a tree by noon and by some miracle draws out his guitar. He strums a cord, unfamiliar to his fingers. He doesn’t want a lullaby of love. A lament of his grief is easier to pluck out on the strings. In a low voice, he begins to sing, a wailing song of sorrow.