Work Text:
Venus has ever been truthful with herself.
That much, at least, she can claim. She knows every inch and speck and breath of her existence, and knows it for what it is. She has little patience for pretty deceits, prattling excuses, half-hearted pretenses at altruism. When she bids her son strike the youngest princess of Sicily down, she does not send him to match the girl with an indolent king who will drive her to an early death, or master of a besieged kingdom whose cares will rid her of all her beauty. It will be monsters or nothing.
"Anything to please you, Mother," says Cupid, barely hiding his reluctance behind his bow, and Venus waits until he is gone to laugh wretchedly.
Pleasure, does he think it? It has been long years, even decades, since she can remember anything of the sort. There is very little she would not give to know it once more.
So instead Psyche must suffice.
Perhaps it is that Venus is so very truthful that the faltering lies of others have very little effect on her. When her boy tells her he wishes to have possession of the western estate, where
Zephyrus and his sisters serve, Venus is reminded forcibly of a mortal child smuggling sweetmeats from his nursemaid.
She is a kind and indulgent mother, however, and when Cupid is only left pale and stammering following a few cutting questions, she relents. "Have you heard," she says, "of the trouble
Father Jove suffers over this newest mortal lover of his? Poor little Semele, paying such a price for her curiosity."
That rouses her son. "It was unkindly done," he says, with all the passion that a few scanty centuries of life allows him, "and now Lord Jupiter must spend his nights alone, mourning her."
Venus raises an eyebrow. "Not for long, I imagine," she says dryly, "and you might remember that Semele will mourn too, every bit as alone; only in Proserpina's realm, rather than among Olympus' splendors."
That silences him. Venus had whispered tales of the Underworld to him to dissuade him from a thousand infantile mischiefs, and even now it makes up the subject of his nightmares. It caused a pang at first, to speak so of a world that dear Adonis had loved so, but Cupid had been a stubborn child, and needed something to stay his hand. She will not be a second Maia, trying and failing to keep a scamp of a son in hand.
To which end: "Though Father Jove might have expected it," she says. "It changes a mortal, to be loved by a god--or to know she is, at least. They might have been happy together, otherwise."
Cupid's lips press together in silent contemplation, and Venus knows her work is very nearly done.
She is almost sorry when Cupid returns to her house, his handsome face screwed up with pain and rage, his handsome shoulder scarred. He has watched love a thousand times, but never known it before now, and if he had only thought to ask her, she might have warned him how it burns. There is a reason why none of the other gods have ever felt the need to challenge Venus for the province of love as they as they have beauty.
She is not sorry at all when Psyche approaches, long hair matted, eyes dark. This is a woman who knows regret, Venus thinks, and for an instant, considers mercy. An instant only; she was born of rage and revenge, and those echoes never fade easily. Venus steels herself.
Three tasks are nothing to what Venus has endured.
"You will never understand my pain," Cupid accuses, sprawled upon his untidy bed. Her fingers itch to straighten it for him, to smoothen his disheveled curls, to shake him out of his self-imposed snit. "You've never before been in love--or, if you have, far too many times to appreciate it as I do. Why else would you have kept Father and Vulcan dangling all these years? Why else would you have brawled with Prosperpina over a single mortal boy's life?"
There, again, Venus may appreciate the benefits of truth. He tells her nothing she does not know herself. She leaves him locked in his chambers to overcome the worst of his sullenness, and returns to her audience chamber where Psyche waits, arms laden down with wool.
She thinks of her son as an infant, round-cheeked and innocent; she thinks of him demanding stories of a hero who might defend him from the horrors of the Underworld. When she makes her final demand, Psyche shudders but does not falter.
A dazzling champion indeed. All Cupid's half-hearted defenses and remonstrations will turn to dust before her--and Venus expects nothing more.
Vulcan is ever kind.
Not polished, of course, or polite, but mortals forget it takes kindness to see the potential in base metal and to work it so it shows itself to its best advantage. That, Venus thinks, is what she loved best about him: that urge to bring beauty forward, whether or not it was willing.
He sees her, too, in just such a manner; just because Venus is ever truthful does not mean all the gods are. As she darts off the dancing-floor, pausing to rub her aching feet, he tells her,
"You meant it from the start, didn't you?"
Venus looks up to follow his gaze, where Cupid stands resplendent beside his bride. Psyche's face shines with more than simple happiness; the last few drops of ambrosia gleam on her lips, and the blush on her cheeks is golden.
"Oh yes," she says, doing her best to affect maternal contentment.
"Saw the boy was lonely," Vulcan continues, doggedness being another essential trait of the smith, "and set out to find him a wife. Even went to the trouble of making him think it was his own idea, and making her fight for it so she might value it all the more. Well done, wife."
He is ever kind, and he ever sees worth in her. She turns her face away, and Vulcan, mercifully, speaks no more.
The truth, then. It is not her way to hide, least of all from herself.
Venus knows herself. Envy is irrevocably yoked to love and beauty; envy is the hound that snaps eternally at her heels. But never more so than when she first sees the King of Sicily offer homage in her temple, his family trailing behind. Certainly his court boasts beauties, his daughters among them, but no one could count his youngest child among them. Only just released from Diana's custody, and bent at the moment at escaping her nursemaid's, Psyche is long-faced and lanky-limbed, knees and elbows scabbed, and yet:
And yet the joy of ordinariness is bright upon her face, the freedom to live and laugh and make what mistakes she will, confident in the knowledge that none of them will outlive her. Her blunders will make up seven days' gossip, no more; no storytellers will whisper of her in hushed tones, hoping to make their listeners laugh.
Venus' stomach churns. Through the stone eyes of her statue, she looks at this laughing, careless girl, and vows: I will see you made no different than me.
What comes next is simple; love, after all, is Venus' only weapon to hold, her son her most reliable pawn to put into play, and beauty her best-beloved gift to bestow.
She is not entirely unkind. There will be no bawdy tales of golden nets, hooted over rowdy campfires, and no sneering catalogues of conquests. But the mercy of oblivion will never again be Psyche's to enjoy, not so long as the truth of what had passed is turned over by strange hands, and twisted, and told anew. Even now the awareness of this pricks at Psyche's fine eyes, sets them shining with tears easily excused as ambrosia's residual effects.
If Venus must be known, at least she will not be alone.