Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s been two weeks since Eurydice arrived in town. Orpheus’s friends seem nice, but she isn’t sure if she can trust them. It’s late the first night of summer, and they’re still in the lounge area of the tavern. Afra takes a swig of her drink and turns to Eurydice. “So, Eurydice, what’s your story?”

“My story?” Eurydice asks.

“You know, where did you come from?” Afra replies. 

“Why are you here?” asks Tim. 

“How’d you find us?” Dwayne asks. 

“Oh,” Eurydice says, “I don’t have a story.”

Jax laughs. “Of course you do!”

"Everyone has a past," Emily adds, "And you don't have to share it, but it feels a lot better if you do."

“I’m a runaway. That’s my story.”

Afra continues to pry. “What are you running from?”

“That’s not important,” Eurydice says, standing up, “I think I should go to bed.” 

Orpheus grabs her wrist. “Don’t go! It’s okay. They’ll stop prying, right, guys?”

“We’re not prying,” Kimberly defends, “We’re getting to know her.” 

Eurydice sighs. “It’s late, Orpheus. I think I’m done for tonight.” 

“You should stay. We can tell you our stories! No pressure to tell yours, of course,” Dwayne says.

Eurydice sits back down. “Okay…” 

“Perfect! I’ll start. When Jax and I were little, it was just the two of us in town,” Dwayne says, “And we were close as we could’ve been, until one day when we were about seven.”

Jax nods. “We were playing a game with a knight and a prince when a lady came by and she seemed to know Mr. Hermes well. She thrust a boy our age towards him and hurried away. Mr. Hermes yelled after her, but she didn’t come back.”

“He was carrying some kind of instrument. It was as big as he was! He looked terrified, so Jax decided to go introduce himself.”

“Hello! I am a brave knight and I rescue princes! I see you are some kind of bard. Do you care to accompany me and write songs about my adventures?”

Jax’s mother sighs. “Annabella, when I suggested you and Dwayne should play a game with knights and princesses, I assumed he’d be the knight.”

“Mom! Don’t call me that!” Jax yells. 

“Then what should I call you?”

“I don’t know…” 

Dwayne scoffs. “That is Sir A. Jackson, savior of the beloved Prince Dwayne!”

Jax’s mother sighs and turns her attention back to her crocheting. Jax reaches a hand out to Orpheus and removes his helmet. “I am Sir A. Jackson, fearless knight and hero to all! Who are you?”

“O-O-Orpheus…”

“Nice to meet you, Orpheus! Do you want to play with us?”

“I want my mom.”

“She’ll be back,” Dwayne says, “You should play with us until she gets here!”

“Okay… but I’m gonna call her Bean, since she doesn’t have another name.”

“Don’t call me she,” Jax says, “but I like Bean!”

“Okay, sorry, Bean,” Orpheus replies, “I won’t do it again.”

“And that’s how we met Orpheus!” Jax says, “And a year later, I came out as trans and Orpheus helped pick my name.”

Orpheus laughs. “And then I knitted him a beanie to commemorate the silly nickname I gave him.”

“I’ve worn it every day since!”

“It was just the three of us in a friend group for a while,” Dwayne says, “and I think it’s time to pass the torch to Emily.”

Emily nods. “I moved here when I was ten. I’m actually a maenad. I was born in the main Maenad colony, and I never really fit in. I was never violent, and I didn’t want to fight, and I honestly wasn’t crazy about living in a lake, either. But my twin sister, Cordelia, loved it. She was killed by vengeful humans when we were ten. After she died, my mother and I had to flee in the middle of the night.”

“Quiet, Emily! They can’t hear us!” Emily’s mother whispers. 

“Where are we going, mom? I’m scared!” 

“We need to get out of here! They threatened to kill you, Emily. For years, the only thing keeping you alive has been the promise your sister showed. Without her, there’s no place for you here.” 

“Where are we going?”

“Away, Emily. Far away. We need to go somewhere safe.”

“What about Cordelia?! She's buried here !”

“We can’t bring her with us, but we won’t forget her.”

“A few days later, we wound up in this town, where we bought a house and lived as humans do. I didn’t tell anyone about my sister until Jax took me in after our house collapsed and killed my mother,” Emily says.

Eurydice goes to say something, but Dwayne rushes to change the subject. “Afra, your turn!”

“Um… Okay… I’m not so sure about following Emily… Mine’s a lot less gorey. I moved here when I was 12 because my dad is a baker and we were having trouble getting ingredients where we were. I tried to introduce myself and Jax got mad at me for trying to steal his friends.”

Tim laughs. “I moved in a couple of weeks later.” 

“The interesting part of my story actually comes two years later, when Kimberly moved in,” Afra says.

“Orpheus! I need your help!” Afra says, frantically approaching her friend.

Orpheus puts down the cup he was drying and the dish towel he was using to dry it. “With what?”

“Jax says you know how to flirt. Is that true?”

“Of course it is, my mama’s a muse, why?”

“There’s a pretty girl out there and I don’t know where to start.”

“Propose!”

“Orpheus, are you crazy?!”

“No, just optimistic,” Orpheus says, peeking out of the kitchen, “Which one is she?”

“The pretty one!”

“I thought you were the pretty one. Everyone always says you are.”

Afra points to Kimberly. Kimberly takes this as an invitation and walks up to them. “Hi, I’m Kimberly. I just moved in down the street. Is it true Mr. Hermes owns this tavern?”

“Yep!” Orpheus says cheerfully, “I’m Orpheus and this is Afra! She’s the pretty one out of our friend group.”

“Subtle, Orpheus,” Afra whispers.

“I can tell,” Kimberly replies.

“I about killed him. He’s lucky that worked,” Afra says.

“He was right,” Kimberly says, “You are pretty.”

“I wasn’t the one who made that up,” Orpheus says.

“Doesn’t make it any less true,” Kimberly replies. 

“How long have you all been calling Afra the pretty one?” Emily asks.

“Remember when we played that spy game? I was the poet, Tim was the tall one, Jax was the loud one, Dwayne was the smart one, you were the funny one, and Afra was the pretty one!” Orpheus says.

“I still think I should’ve been the perceptive one. I’m good at reading people,” Afra says. 

“Is that everyone?” Dwayne asks.

“I still haven’t told my story,” Tim says.

“I’m all ears,” says Eurydice.

“When I was a kid, people called me tiny Tim. I was always the shortest.”

“Seriously?” 

“No. I’ve always been tall. My friends called me ‘tall guy.’ One day, my parents told me we were moving, and I wasn’t happy.”

“We can’t move! I have friends here!”

“You’ll make friends there, too,” Tim’s mother replies. 

“Can’t we just stay here?” Tim begs.

“No. There’s no more food here. We have to go.”

When Tim enters the tavern down the road, he sees a familiar face. “Afra!” 

“Tall guy!”

“We were from the same town and we wound up in the same place!” Tim says, “Isn’t that crazy?”

“I guess,” Eurydice says.

“So…” Afra says, “That’s all of us. What about you?”

“Don’t push her, Afra,” Orpheus says.

“No, it’s okay, she’s not pushing me. Are you guys sure you want to hear the truth about me?”

Everyone nods. Eurydice sighs and stands up. “Okay… the truth is… I don’t have a story. I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”

With that, Eurydice runs upstairs. Orpheus sighs. “She really doesn't like talking about her past.”

Chapter Text

After everyone leaves the bar, Orpheus goes upstairs to talk to Eurydice. She’s sitting on the bed staring at the wall. “You okay, Eury?”

“Are you upset that I've never told you about my past?” she asks.

“Of course not! I love you and I trust you. You don’t have to share a thing if you don’t want to.”

She sighs deeply. “I trust you.”

“Then I’d love to hear your story.”

“You can’t tell anyone.” 

“I promise I won’t.”

Eurydice sighs again. “I was born a long way from here. I lived in a cottage in the woods with a dryad colony. My father died when I was young, so I lived with my mother, and my two younger sisters.”

Seven-year-old Eurydice runs after another young dryad. “Tag! Daisy, you’re it!” 

Daisy laughs and starts running after Eurydice, who climbs a tree to get away. Daisy turns her attention to a third dryad. It’s a hot summer day. The weather is getting worse year by year, but all four seasons are still occurring. All of the young dryads are laughing and playing when the sky suddenly goes dark. Eurydice’s mother runs outside. “Girls, get inside!”

“Why, mom?” Eurydice asks, “We’re still playing!”

“There’s a storm coming! Hurry up!”

Suddenly, it starts pouring. Eurydice hurries inside. Eurydice and her siblings huddle in the living room. The forest begins to flood. A tree falls onto another cottage. “That’s Daisy’s house! We need to check on them!” Eurydice insists, standing up.

Her mother shakes her head. “It’s not safe out there!”

“But-” 

“Eurydice, I said no! Stay inside! Extreme weather like this is especially unsafe for nymphs!”

“But what if they’re hurt?!”

Lightning strikes the fallen tree and the cottage goes up in flames. Eurydice watches Daisy run out of her house and be whisked away by floodwater, along with the rest of her family. “Mom, I’m scared!” 

“Calm down and set a good example for your siblings.”

“Mom, they’re gonna drown!”

“Stay in here, where it’s safe. We must all take care of ourselves first. You need to learn how to hold your own and not focus on others.”

“She drowned. A lot of people did that day,” Eurydice tells Orpheus, “And the weather just kept getting worse. As this happened, different kinds of nymphs started competing. It was clear to me even when I was nine that not all of us were going to survive.”

Eurydice watches from behind a bush as a group of maenads invade their colony in search of food. She sees two girls that seem to be about her age. They’re blonde and look exactly alike. She watches as another maenad and one of the twins break down the door to her home in search of resources. The other twin is told to inspect the bushes. Eurydice hears her mother screaming, and then silence. She sees her sisters run out of the house. She locks eyes with the girl who is searching the bushes. She seems just as terrified as Eurydice is. Another maenad yells. “Emily! Do you see anyone back there?”

The girl called Emily is silent for a moment. The adult maenad groans. “Emily, we’ve been over this! I know you’re a wimp, but if you see a dryad, you have to kill her and take whatever she has!”

“Th-there’s no one back here!” Emily yells. She gives Eurydice a small smile and runs the other way. 

The maenads leave a few hours later. Eurydice looks at what she has in her backpack and decides it’s enough. Her mother is dead. Her sisters are nowhere to be found. She decides the best thing to do is to run away and keep running for the rest of her life.

Eurydice sighs. “I found out my sisters had frozen to death a few months later.”

Orpheus hugs Eurydice. “So you’ve lived all on your own since you were nine?!”

“No,” Eurydice says, “Mr. Apollo found me wandering when I was ten and took me in.” Eurydice smiles at the memory. “I called him Papa,” she continues, “and he considered me his daughter. When I was fourteen, I had to go on the run again. A few of the other gods kept saying I wasn’t his real daughter and he had no business taking care of me. Eventually, he gave in and told me to go out on my own, but that I could always come back if I needed to. I never came back. I just kept running. I don’t know exactly how I wound up here, but I know the journey involved a lot of stealing and selling my body.”

Orpheus is silent for a moment before squeezing her hand. “You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. I’m so proud to be your husband.”

Eurydice tearfully kisses his cheek. “I’m proud to be your wife. I’m glad to have found someone who makes me want to stop running.”

Orpheus thinks for a moment. “Do you think Emily remembers you or knows who you are?” 

“If she does, she’s never said anything. You can’t tell her any of this, though. I think we’re both better off with a fresh start.”

“I won’t say a word.”