Chapter Text
It takes a couple years to afford their own home, a cozy abode fashioned of stones and wood, found on her walks, donated by his patrons. It holds three rooms, enough for a small kitchen and small table and even a fireplace, something Eurydice never thought she’d own—not that she can light it anymore.
Soot smears the ground in front of it; the stones are cold. They ran out of matches long ago.
It’s been ten years since Hadestown.
The ruddy stones blacken Eurydice’s knees as she rises, brushing off her hands and surveying their house. The lights are off, the sky outside is dark—it’s a cold night, fall spilling into winter. The new joy of autumn leaves has blurred into exhaustion over time; seasons have made the years go slower, much slower, and Eurydice feels as if centuries have passed instead of a decade.
Orpheus is older too, old enough to rub his wrists after a long time of playing battered tunes, old enough to put coins on the dinner table and see what they mean. Eurydice takes up a trade in bartering, but people are less kinder now that she’s grown, even if the forgiving weather reminds them of what she did.
So she brings home a few coins, and Orpheus does what he can at the bar, with his music. They work all day and sleep all night, and in between, he’s reading, and she’s walking.
Eurydice does a lot of that.
Maybe it’s whatever was left over from her vagabond days, maybe it’s because the town is too stuffy and the earth too close for comfort, but more often than not, Eurydice finds herself wandering the streets, the marketplace, the woods outside their house—anywhere, in any weather, at any time of day. Orpheus accompanied her at first, worried, perhaps, that she would leave again, that she would get lost, that she would…
Now, sometimes, he forgets she’s gone at all.
It’s not falling out of love, exactly, more like falling into life. Growing older, though they are still young. They go from embracing to holding hands when nightmares shake one of them awake, from sitting down at the table for meals to eating on the go, though where they are ever going, neither is sure.
Eurydice doesn’t know where she’s going at this moment, as she closes the door quietly behind her and slips into the night. Nightmares that smell of burning coal and slaving souls have dissolved into daytime flickers behind her eyelids, brushable waking dreams. She is no longer bothered, and when icy wind stings the back of her neck, she simply pulls her coat tighter and walks on.
There’s something wrong with them, she thinks, meandering along a dirt-caked path. Something from Hadestown, something from time, something that’s making them start to forget what it was like before. Is it really aging? Is it really silence? She doesn’t remember greeting him in the morning, can't feel the shape of his hands on her face anymore.
Through the woods and onto the edge of town, she turns down a path traveled twice only. Her feet ache a little, and the air is still and silent. Once, there were people here, and there will be again in the summer, but for now, there is no one, and the snowflakes that begin to fall are welcome company. Eurydice picks through the last nettles of autumn and her feet touch creaking wood, edging along a platform until she comes to a stop on the train tracks.
The wind stirs, and she shivers. That’s how it happened the first time around; a rush of wind, of screaming souls that took her down, down underground, until it was so hot and bright Eurydice worried she was going to be swallowed by some underground sun. This wind is stale today, however; the train only comes twice a year, and so she sits on the concrete edge of the platform, legs swinging, eyes gazing into the tunnel beyond.
This must have been where he looked for her, the first step of the journey. But Orpheus is not here now, and Eurydice lies down on the stone, staring up at the sky, her arms in her pockets. A lonely bird calls without music and she closes her eyes.
There is something in her pocket. It’s the only thing that’s warmed her on this walk, thin and smooth like a rock, but with a serrated, worn edge—her last souvenir. When Eurydice opens her eyes she finds she’s holding it out in front of her, mindlessly playing with it: a golden coin. The golden coin.
Her ticket.
The wind begins to pick up as soon as the thought comes to her mind. There’s no reason to give into it; they have food, they have shelter, but Eurydice returns to stand on the train tracks nonetheless. Her heart is light, her stomach empty; that is enough to summon it. Her hair whips across her face and the ground rumbles, and she knows that somewhere in the tunnel, it will emerge with a low groan, a hopeful whistle—the first music in a while.
The force of it starts to nudge her backwards. Eurydice gazes at the coin in her palms and looks into that abyss of a tunnel—and why is she doing this right now? Her heart is skittering in her chest and her eyes are squinting, blinking away tears caused by the wind, or something else.
And it rushes. The air seems to stop as the train barrells over, a translucent machine of damned souls that no longer scream. Eurydice stares into the headlights and thinks she’s missing something here, thinks that she didn’t lock the door or leave her money on the counter before she went, but her fingers slip and the coin falls to the tracks, sealing the deal.
There’s a shout from behind her, a racket nearly drowned out by the wind. Birds squawk, and the ground is shaking so hard that she nearly falls to her knees, but through it all, she finally makes out the scream. It’s her name. She hasn’t heard her name in years, let alone from him, and it is him, she realizes, a second too late.
He calls her name.
She turns too late.