Work Text:
Bleary-eyed, panting from delirium, the Prince of the Underworld heaved past the place where the Styx had taken its ruler for safe passage homewards. Nothing but scarred earth remained, remnants of a struggle beyond mortal comprehension.
Stygius purred in Zagreus’ grasp. Too long had it been since the infernal blade had gotten the privilege to gorge on blood so rich and kingly. Its hilt thrummed in the Prince’s hand, as satiated and lazy as a tool could be.
The adrenaline was ebbing away. Zagreus felt his limbs numb and jellify, only to tense back like springs as a gust of air whirled over his skin. Gooseflesh prickled over him, a new and bizarre physical sensation that made him grit his teeth and tremble, the laurels etched around his chest humming a song of discomfort.
“Ugh, gods. Okay.” Shaking his head like the hounds of Hell, Zagreus made himself walk towards the path that lay before him. “Need to go.” His mutterings urged him on, meaningless as they were. “Almost there.”
Another icy breeze swirled around him. Zagreus tried to ignore it, even as he felt his father’s blood dry to a scaly crust over his arms. It didn’t matter. His mother was a stone’s throw away if Nyx’s instructions were still accurate.
“What did she say this stuff was called?” Zagreus kicked at the white power strewn over the ground. It turned to liquid when it touched the embers of his feet. Walking in it chilled him more than the wind at his bare chest did. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the watery path that lay behind him, and wondered if the entire surface was cursed with the stuff.
Sounds were different on the surface. It was quieter, free from the moans of the damned, though the howl of the wind substituted that in its own way. Zagreus looked on at the great columns that lined the path, odd looking gnarled things that reminded him of the wooden crown upon Eurydice’s head. Trees, then. So that was what they looked like, and in such abundance!
Though urgency pushed him on, Zagreus stopped when the path brought him to a small pond. Sheathing Stygius, he knelt at the embankment and dipped his filthy arms into the water.
“Don’t want to give her a fright,” he murmured to himself. Exhaustion was giving way to bouncy anxiety. He scrubbed away the gore from his arms and splashed palmfuls of water over his chest and sweat-soaked face. His hair felt matted down and limp, and his burning crown sizzled whenever a droplet touched it.
Satisfied, though chilled to the bone, Zagreus continued on.
Eventually, the trees broke into a clearing. Zagreus stopped, puzzled, as the ceiling above him turned from a marbled grey to a dusky pink, and seemed brighter by the minute. To his left, a great plain of water undulated as far as his eyes could take in. Something was emerging beyond it, a great curve of light that forced him to look away.
“Helios.” Zagreus tried to look back, to see if he could catch even a glimpse of a fabled chariot. No luck. It was too bright, but even a small look at the sun awed him all the same, its beauty so alien and overwhelming to a godling who had known only rooms and corridors in his life.
He pressed on. The white slurry gave way to grass that looked so much like the fields of Elysium, but different. It was real, and not a facsimile of life to placate a shade. Zagreus felt the sprigs of it turn to cinders under his heels, a trail of hellish footprints marking his trek.
A great stone archway greeted him, its surface streaked with lichen. Helios’ journey must have kicked off, for what lay before the Prince was bright and clear as he walked through the gate and saw the modest cottage ahead. Strange shapely plants littered the ground, a rainbow of color that spoke of bounty.
There was a woman near the cottage’s door, her back to Zagreus as she bent forward to pluck at the soil, a mossy green dress cinched modestly about her waist. Her hair was a flaxen blonde, but it looked so much like his own that he knew who she was. His heart pounded.
Zagreus cleared his throat. “Um, excuse me… Hello?” His voice strained and cracked from his own nervousness. This is what he had spent a mortal’s lifetime on, and now she stood within reach. Absurdly, he had the impulse to flee. Achilles’ words boxed his skull and made him keep afoot. Fear is for the weak, lad.
Flinching, the woman rose and turned towards him, and any doubt that she was who he was seeking vanished in that instant, even as her brow lowered at the sight of him.
“Yes?” The woman, his mother, Persephone, called back. She had a mother’s voice, so much like Nyx’s, all warm despite its coldness. “Hello, indeed. Pray, who are you to wander about here? This is private property, you know. Can I help you?” She put her hands on her hips, a pillar of strength.
She didn’t recognize him.
It shouldn’t have been shocking. Persephone had only known Zagreus as her baby daughter upon her break with the Underworld. It was unreasonable to expect her to know the man standing before her as that same girl. It was selfish, but Zagreus couldn’t help but feel the slight twinge of hurt that itched at his heart. He pushed it away, disgusted with himself, and looked her in the eye.
“Um, hello. Persephone? My name is Zagerus.” Zagreus realized the name would be meaningless to her, but he couldn’t bring himself to say a name that he had long since drowned in the Styx. “If I am not mistaken, I am your son. I… was your daughter.”
Persephone’s face darkened in a second. Her stern, yet not unkind expression twisted to the sourness of grief, and the fury that bubbled up spat to the surface in a volcanic burst.
“You…” she sputtered, her voice a death-gasp. “Oh, how dare you. How dare you!” Her hands clenched into rocky fists. “Get out of here. Get out!”
Fear is for the weak. Zagreus stood firm. Through all of his bloodshed and embraces with death, he had never felt more terror than he felt now. “So, you are her.” He stayed rooted to the spot, the grass beneath his flame-licked feet roasting to ash. “I’ll leave. I can, but not without answers first. I don’t care if you hate me, but I need to know why you left me.” He cursed himself for how shaky his voice rang in his own ears.
He did very much care if she hated him. To have such a terrible thing confirmed would crush him for all eternity. But he had to press on. This was the point of no return.
Persephone stepped towards him. The dark cloud that swam over her face was gone, and in its wake was stunned bafflement. “You died. You died. Your feet spluttered out as you left me, your eyes never opened. They took you away. You died. Yet you stand here before me.” Tears pooled in her eyes. As she cried, she did so without abandon, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as she stared at him.
“Died?” Zagreus blinked. Fearful nausea morphed to confusion. “You mean permanently died? But… oh, gods.” The realization struck him like an arrow. “You never knew I existed, either.”
“The cruelty of the Fates,” Persephone breathed. She closed the distance between them to but a hand’s reach, her gaze pouring over him. “Your hair. Gods, your hair is the same as when you were born. Oh, a son.” She reached for him then, her firm hands trembling. “I have a son.”
Zagreus bowed his head for her. He was astonished that he stood taller than her. As he felt her fingers curl into his hair and slide down to cup his face, his eyes burned. “You don’t mind?” The words choked out of him. He closed his eyes.
“Mind what?” Persephone laughed, an astonishing sound for how much it mirrored his own. “Mind that I have a son who yet lives, instead of a daughter I thought dead? A son who stands before me, even, who traveled from Hell itself to find me?” Her thumbs swiped away the tears he did not realize were there. “What did you say your name was now, my son?”
A hard mass had yarned itself up in Zagreus’ throat. “Zagreus.”
“Zagreus. Zagreus. Zagreus.” His mother said the name like a prayer to the gods. “Oh, it’s perfect. Of course. Who could name you better than your own self?” She laughed again, clear as a bell. “Zagreus, my son.” She cupped the back of his head and bade him to embrace her, his face pressing to her shoulder as her fingertips brushed at the flittering boughs of his crown.
She smelled like peat moss and warmth, cozy instead of searing. What he once felt in echoes whenever Achilles had spared him with praise his father had never given now poured over his heart in a great wave that swept him away.
Throwing his arms around her, Zagreus wept without abandon. He would have collapsed had not his mother kept him upright in her arms. Nyx, for all that she loved him as her own, had never held him so close, or with such fierce strength.
“I…” he blubbered, his speech garbled with sobs and muffled to her shoulder. “I spent so long trying to find you. Why did you leave? What happened?”
Persephone’s arms tightened around him. “I couldn’t stay there, Zagreus. You were stillborn. Did he ever tell you that? I thought you were dead, and so I fled. Until then, you were my only tether to that place. To continue to live where you passed. No, it was impossible.”
Zagreus took this in slowly. The tears slowed from him as he pulled away from his mother’s arms, his hands taking hers in his own. “Mother.” He realized it was the first time he had called her that.
“To think he would keep you from me!” Persephone went on, her lips pressed to a thin line. She squeezed Zagreus’ hands. “To think he wouldn’t even bother to tell me you lived, or at least to correct my memory of you for the sake of your dignity…” she sighed. “It’s unthinkable.”
“I didn’t know of you,” Zagreus said. “Not until recently. Father had always told me Nyx was my mother.”
The revelation did not spark the rage he expected. Persephone only sighed again, long and weary. “Of course he did,” she said. “What greater act of spite could there be?” She rubbed her calloused thumbs over the backs of Zagreus’ knuckles. “Nyx, she was good to you?”
“She was.” The churning in his gut was creeping back. Zagreus chalked it up to nerves. “Always felt off, though. One of those things where I think I always knew, or had an idea of. I’m sorry it took me so long to understand.”
“Zagreus, you were a child. That was not your responsibility. Do not blame yourself for such things.” Persephone urged him to walk, tugging his hands as she bade him round the side of her cottage to where a table and chairs fashioned of sanded wood stood by a gently flowing creek. “Come, sit with me.”
Though normally loathe to rest, Zagreus followed his mother in dizzied compliance. His head was aching, and for one of the few times in his life, without Hypnos’ influence, he sat down to rest without a fuss. “Did you,” He put a hand over his mouth to stifle a cough. “Did you like being in the Underworld? Father wasn’t cruel to you, was he?”
“Oh, no.” Persephone pulled her chair closer to Zagreus’ before she sat down. “Your father had his moments, but he was never directly unkind.” She looked towards the brook, hands settling in her lap. “I never felt fully in place there. It was never really a home, not to me. How could it be for a goddess with divinity so intertwined with life?” She frowned. “No, had you been born alive, I know I would have eventually left, but I would have taken you with me. I would. I swear it.”
Black spots were tainting Zagreus’ vision. He tried to blink them away, to catch onto the nearest thought that occurred to him and speak it aloud. “Father said when I beat him, he wanted me to tell you that Cerberus was doing well.”
“Ah, he told you that, did he?” Persephone snorted. “Well, that’s good. I’m glad, despite everything.”
Zagreus tried to nod. His head lolled atop his neck like a heavy weight. “That’s good,” he parroted back.
“Zagreus?” Persephone took his hand. He scarcely felt it. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a bit tired, I think.” Zagreus felt as if he were being magnetized to the earth itself. “Not used to, what do you call it? The weather?” He forced a breathy chuckle that came out more like a groan.
Persephone’s frown turned anguished. “No… no, that’s not it.”
“What?”
“Zagreus,” she said his name slowly, as if cherishing each syllable. “You can’t stay here.”
The impact of that reality did not fully hit him. “I… what do you mean? You’re kicking me out?”
“You’re locked in that place, same as your father.” She swore. “The fates are cruel, neverendingly so. Gods, to think they’d take you away from me so soon.” Her hand gripped his so hard that he felt his bones creak. “Gods, to be given the knowledge that my child lives, that I have a son, and to have him taken from me so soon.” She swore again.
Death’s chill prickled over Zagreus’ body. He felt the fire on his feet and the glow of the laurels upon his chest flicker and dim. “I’ll come back,” he stammered. “M-Maybe he’ll just let me come back.”
“You demand it.” Persephone nearly leapt from her chair to embrace him once more. She kissed his cheek. “And you ask why he, and for that matter, Nyx, shielded you from me.” She cradled him as he slumped into her hold. “I have so many questions for you, my son,” she whispered. “I want to know you. You’ll come back?”
Looking back, Zagreus couldn’t recall what he had said in reply. He hoped it had been enough. He hoped he had sworn he would claw his way back, under any circumstance. He would not keep her waiting. Not while the wound of separation was torn and ripped anew.
The Styx took him without mercy, the yank of its current a force that swept him to the House as mercilessly as violent death. He came to the surface with a heaving gasp, the wine blood of an amalgamation of mortals pouring down his body in a sticky warmth that felt sickeningly familiar.
He walked up the steps, head down, feeling how the shades slipped through him. His burning feet slapped the marbled tile.
His father’s laughter bounced off the House’s walls and ricocheted to his soul.