Work Text:
The light of the world above is blinding. For a moment, Eurydice sees the world go white and for that moment she fears that she’s back in Hadestown, blinded by the heavy industrial lights. But there’s rainwater trickling down her bare arms, and it doesn’t rain in Hadestown. It can’t rain in Hadestown.
“Orpheus!” she cries out. Squinting against the sun, Eurydice can just about make out her lover’s form, a shadow in the light. “Orpheus!” she shouts again when he doesn’t turn. Orpheus stumbles towards a sparse grove of trees—where he’d taken her after that night in the bar—with his hands over his ears, and he’s shaking like a sapling in a windstorm. She’s looking at him, and he’s looking anywhere but. The sky, the ground, the trees—his eyes land everywhere except on her, and she understands.
“Look at me,” Eurydice pleads, crossing the distance between them. She tugs at his elbow, and he withdraws into himself. “Orpheus, please.”
“It’s a trick,” Orpheus manages through clenched teeth. He’s still trembling, his skin like fire under Eurydice’s cold hands, and as she tries to turn his head he twists it as far as he can in the other direction.
“It’s not. Look up, Orpheus.”
He does. He still won’t look at her, but his head bobs a little as he takes in the sun, the grass, the trees. He drops to his knees and reaches for the soil, lets pieces of it crumble between his fingers. Then he reaches for a blade of grass, intent, like he’s looking for something. “Did we make it?” he asks.
“We did.”
“It’s not a trap?” He turns to look at her, and then turns back before she can catch his eye.
“Orpheus,” Eurydice pleads. She places her hand on his shoulder, and when he finally looks at her it’s like the whole world is in his eyes. His skin, what she can see in the gaps between bruises and blood, is paler than she’s ever seen it, and his clothes are torn and he’s covered in mud and coal dust and dirt. But his eyes are wide and amber in the sun and so filled with love, and in an instant Eurydice is on her knees in front of him.
Orpheus slumps toward her, like all the wind has been knocked from his sails. Eurydice is glad they’re on the ground already, because she’s neither tall nor strong enough to hold him up. She grabs his shoulders, tries in vain to support him so she can get a look at his face, but eventually her only option is to lay him on the grass. It’s a small relief to Eurydice that she can see Orpheus’s chest rising and falling as he breathes, no matter how laboured it seems. She doesn’t call his name this time, just sits back and digs her fingers into the grass until a shadow falls over them both and forces her gaze up.
“Mr Hermes.”
Exhaustion sits heavy in the lines of the god’s face, but he smiles at her all the same. “Thought I might find you here,” he says. His eyes stray to Orpheus, and he chuckles. “Shoulda known. Boy ain’t got one sturdy bone in his body.”
“What should I do?”
“I’ll call a doctor,” Mr Hermes tells her, and Eurydice opens her mouth to tell him they can’t afford the expense, that even before she crossed the wall and he’d gone after her there had been very little money for food. The god waves her off, tells her not to think of the cost. “It’s been a long road,” he says. “Go clean up. I’ll take care of him.”
Reluctantly, Eurydice leaves Orpheus in Mr Hermes’ capable hands. She struggles a bit with the long-idle door to their flat, pushing several times with her shoulder before she manages to get it open. It’s bitterly cold inside, the windows blown open by the wind in the absence of anyone to keep watch. Eurydice wrestles them closed before braving the washroom. It’s like the tiles are ice under her feet as she strips off her boots and clothing and starts the water for a bath. When she climbs in, the water is so icy she feels her heart skip a beat. For a moment, she’s back on the ground in the woods, shivering, hungry, feeling the life drain out of her as she struggles to catch her breath and the wind howls and—
“Eurydice?”
Lady Persephone. Eurydice jolts out of her waking nightmare. Water splashes over the side of the tub and seeps into the cracks of the wooden floor. “Eurydice!” Lady Persephone calls again, and Eurydice imagines the goddess finding her like this, naked and shivering in water so cold it reminds her of death. She gets enough wits about her to climb out of the bath and pull her threadbare towel around herself before Persephone opens the bathroom door.
“Lady Persephone.” Eurydice bows as best as she can with the towel wrapped around her and her limbs tight with cold. Lady Persephone looks unbothered by Eurydice’s state.
“It’s good to see you on top, sister,” she says. Her hair is down from its black net, and she looks less like a mourner out of her black dress. Her face is drawn, though, her lips tight. “I brought you some clothes, and something to eat.”
Clothes. Eurydice hadn’t thought that far. “Thank you,” she says, and lets Lady Persephone lead her to the bed, where she’s laid out a grey dress and a pair of black leggings. Neither are torn or stained, and when Eurydice touches the dress it’s soft between her fingers. “There are boots, too,” Lady Persephone says, and looking at them Eurydice knows they’re worth more than she could ever afford on her own.
“I can’t accept this,” she says through teeth still clenched from the cold. Something dark crosses Lady Persephone’s face, and then it passes like a cloud over the sun and the goddess smiles.
“I insist.” Her lips curl up at the corners as she adds, “You’ll want to be dressed when you go see your man.”
“Orpheus.” It’s a whisper. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. Get dressed and I’ll take you to him.” Persephone leaves, and Eurydice feels considerably warmer even in her absence.
Persephone takes Eurydice down into the bar, past the tables and the taps and into the back room. When she opens the door, Eurydice is flooded with relief to see that Orpheus is sitting up on the battered couch, drinking something from a chipped cup and nodding obediently as Mr Hermes speaks. This time, he only flinches for a moment when he sees Eurydice, before he breaks into as much of a smile as his battered face will allow.
“Eurydice,” he breathes, and in seconds she’s reduced to tears.
“Orpheus.” She rushes to his side, barely hearing Mr Hermes as he implores her to be gentle. One hand on each side, she cradles Orpheus’s face and kisses the corner of his mouth, as soft as she can without sacrificing the sensation of her lips against his. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” Mr Hermes says. “That bite on his leg will need tending to until it heals, but…”
“Bite?”
“Cerberus.” Orpheus shakes his head at Eurydice’s fussing, and she bites her lip to stop herself from saying more. “Damn thing had three heads. Shoulda seen it.”
Despite herself, Eurydice laughs. For the first time since she left the underworld, it feels like things might be okay.
It’s a slow return to normal. For the first week, Eurydice wakes in the dead of night with her heart pounding as she chokes on her own breath. Usually, Orpheus wakes with her. She wishes he wouldn’t, consumed as he is by the utter exhaustion of what he’s accomplished, but when she wakes, she feels his warm hands on her back, her hips, her shoulders, and it’s alongside him that she settles back into sleep. Sometimes it’s Orpheus who jolts awake, groaning in pain or coughing as his lungs fight to dislodge the coal dust. Eurydice wakes with him, and holds him steady as she aches with sympathy. During the day, he plucks at his guitar and drinks the tea she brings him. At night, she lights candles and whispers half-remembered blessings to keep the dark at bay. And so spring passes like this, until it’s summer again.
Lady Persephone meets Eurydice at the bar one night. “It’s a bitter wine,” she says, leaning against the rough wood in front of her, “love. But it’ll spin you round, sister, better than any drink.”
Eurydice looks into her glass, tips the dregs down her throat. “Intoxicating.” It’s a word she’s never found cause to use, but she likes the way it feels in her mouth.
“That’s right.” Lady Persephone turns her attention away from the bar, towards Orpheus. It’s what most of the patron’s do, Eurydice’s noticed. When Orpheus sings, they turn to him like sunflowers toward the sun. “He sounds better, your man.”
“He is.”
“And you?”
“I am.”
For the first time since she resurfaced, it doesn’t feel like a lie.