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The place is dark, unnaturally so, in a way that makes it seem like maybe sunlight had only ever been a fuzzy dream that can’t quite be remembered. The walls are damp, made of stone and leaking sludgy water through the many cracks they have sustained throughout the centuries. And the air – cold and sharp, like nothing of the Upper world; stagnant, unmoving, suffocating.
There is no need to breathe in such a place.
Hades and Persephone stand on the precipice before the sea which he is sure will finally be the thing to make her run, to make her see sense. They can hear faint moaning below - a terrible cacophony of sorrow that reaches up, up, up out of the waters and into their ears.
He hates the sound, wants to shield her from it, but she closes her eyes and listens, breathes deep, and then they are looking over the edge and there it is. The sea of souls. They swirl around, iridescent and casting off a soft, sad light all their own, their faces distorted in aching torment. The souls of the damned come to suffer. He is waiting for her look of horror, for her pleas to leave, for her to exist separate from him once more.
She turns and it is not fear he sees on her face. Instead she smiles, her white teeth almost feral in the greenish glow.
“I love it here,” Persephone says, and Hades is sure she can see on his face just how much he is in love with her. He does not care. She loves it here, and he no longer has to hide.
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They say that Hades fell in love with Persephone the moment he set eyes on her. He decided then and there he must take her as his wife and devised a plan to kidnap her.
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The first time Hades sees her is an accident.
He is above, unnatural for him, but not unheard of. There was a stubborn soul, unwilling to submit, and Hermes had regrettably told him that he was having trouble escorting the now deceased man to the Underworld, forcing Hades to finish the job himself.
This is how Hades lays eyes on Persephone.
He finds her in an endless field, not far from Anatolia. She is alone and unworried. She has not seen him. A light, sweeping dress of pink covers her slender body, hugging her curves and stopping just above her bare feet. Her hair, a deep, rich brown, lays in waves down her back and falls slightly over her shoulder as she leans down to pluck a few yellow flowers from the earth. She places them behind her ear and falls onto her back, arms stretched out in the green, luscious grass, eyes gazing upward to the cloudless sky.
The stories he has heard of the young goddess have not done her justice, have not captured her beauty as much as this moment.
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They say he watched her, learned her habits, learned when she was alone and when she was not. They say he bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment of capture.
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The first time Hades sees her is an accident.
The second time is not.
He is not stalking her, he tells himself. It is more like admiring from a far. He makes sure to keep his distance every time, concealed within the drooping branches of the old willow tree, so as not to startle her.
Some days she is with friends, or her mother. Some days she brings a book and reads for hours. And some days, she lies in the grass, just as she had that first day, and does nothing but stare towards the heavens.
Hades likes these days best.
He stares and tries to think of what she might be daydreaming about. Nothing comes to mind. All he knows is death and she is life personified. Even more reason to keep his distance.
It is on one of these days, however, that it happens.
“You can come out, you know,” she calls, hands still resting behind her head. “I don’t bite.”
For a moment, Hades is sure his heart stops beating. He hopes, prays (to who? Gods, he’s an idiot), that she is speaking to anyone but him, but then she is laughing, getting to her feet and walking towards him, bathed in sunlight. He is frozen to his spot behind the tree trunk, helpless as she approaches and stands before him. He stares down at his hands, unsure of what to do.
“You’ve been watching me for days now,” she says, her tone accusing but with a hint of mirth. He can feel the heat rushing to his cheeks and wants to curse himself for his indiscretion. How embarrassing to be caught. How embarrassing: a blushing god of the Underworld.
He has no answer for her, so, again, she takes the lead.
“My name is Persephone.” She holds out a graceful hand for him to shake and he doesn’t breathe as he grasps it, surprised by the calluses he feels on her palm. He had always imagined her to have soft hands.
“Adrastus,” he says, finally meeting her eyes. They are green and dancing, like the willow leaves that blow in the breeze. He does not want to see the fear and horror in them just yet.
“Adrastus,” she repeats.
They are still clutching hands. It is the beginning.
In a way, it is the end, too.
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She was perfect, they say. Lovely, pure, simple. Always the picture of pious innocence. She loved her mother and she loved her flowers and she wanted for nothing.
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She mostly talks and he mostly listens, which works perfectly well for him.
He learns that she loves lilies but doesn’t care for hyacinths because they make her nose inch. He learns that she snorts when she laughs too hard and silently raises her left eyebrow when she disagrees with something he says. He learns that the mischievous glint in her eyes never quite goes out and that she is always spouting out wild ideas they should do, though they always stay sitting in the field. He learns, too, that there are times when she is moody, can flip on a coin - lashing out at him for any wrong look or word or even a sigh.
He learns that she never apologizes.
And on a day when the heavens open and the rain falls heavy and thick, he learns that sunlight does not become her as much as he thought it did.
She stands, face tilted upwards, arms at her sides with palms upturned, and lets the warm spring water soak through her clothes and into her skin. The world is dark around her, the clouds bleak and dreary in the sky, but her face is blissful under the relentless downpour.
She is not at all what he expected.
Most surprisingly, he finds that her eyes harden when she speaks of home and of her mother. She confides in him one ordinary day that her mother is planning on marrying her off to a wealthy king across the Aegean Sea and Hades feels his stomach drop to his toes, though he knows his reaction is unwarranted. He knows they never could be anything but this; two gods finding respite in a field, two gods passing the time of eternity anyway they can.
Hades thinks it is more than passing time for him, though, and the idea frightens him in a way nothing has for centuries.
Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly like the Hades everyone believes him to be, he contemplates cutting the unknown king’s string and throwing him to the bottom of the sea of souls. He doesn’t do it, of course; knows he never could. He does not decide who lives or dies.
He simply greets them when they do.
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He took her virginity, they say in hushed voices. Ripped it from her unwilling body as she cried out. And after, he tricked her into eating his fruit, so that he may have kept her forever. What a pity, they say. Such a naïve girl. Such a monster of a god.
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“I brought you something,” she says one day and holds out her cupped palms. Inside, a handful of small rich, red seeds, stark against the paleness of her skin.
“Eat,” she says, and he does not say that he hasn’t eaten anything for lifetimes over, that no one offers ambrosia to god of the dead. Instead, he plucks them from her open hands and pops the whole lot into his mouth.
They burst, a sweet flavor he had forgotten even existed, and he closes his eyes to the taste of it, lets it seep in his mouth. He feels a drop of juice slip from his lips and when he opens his eyes, it is to see Persephone fixated intently on his mouth, trailing the drop with her gaze.
He has seen her look at him like this more and more often – though when he is alone again, he always convinces himself that the heady heat of the afternoon must have made him imagine it – but there is something different in her stare today. Less of a maybe. More of a yes.
She is stepping closer to him, bringing a hand to rest on his chest, and Hades can feel his heart beating in his ears when she rises up on her tiptoes. Her tongue darts out, licking up the red on his chin until she meets his lips, and then they are kissing and it is hard and heady and wrong, so, so wrong. She still doesn’t know.
“Persephone,” he tries, pulling away but his words get caught in his throat at the sight of her puffy lips, her eyes half-closed in desire. She is looking at him like she knows him.
This is what he tells himself, at least, after.
“Shhh,” she says, bringing her lips close to his again. He can feel her breath fluttering out, mixing with his. Then she crashing her mouth onto his again, pulling at his tunic, shedding her dress. He does not push for more, but it doesn’t matter. She does not need the encouragement.
There is a moment, right before she breaks, where her mouth starts to form a word and he swears, would bet his immortal life on it, but – no. The name she cries out is not his own. Hades feels a little sick.
It is later, when they are lying naked on the soft bed of grass that she props up on an elbow to look at him. The look she gives him is a mix of happiness and… victory?
Yes, she looks victorious, green eyes bright and burning.
“You ate my fruit,” she says to him. “Do you know what that means?”
He does. He did, too, when she offered, but pretended he didn’t. He thought she must not have known. He stays silent.
“You’re mine now,” she whispers into the soft breeze.
He doesn’t bother arguing, doesn’t mind that she has tricked him. He just leans up and kisses her, long and slow.
She is right, anyway. He is hers.
He had been long before he tasted the pomegranate seeds.
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They say she was taken against her will, that she struggled and screamed and wept as his arms swept her up and carried her from her beloved field, away from her beloved mother. Oh, how she loved her mother and begged to be returned.
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The next time he sees her she is pacing, smashing the yellow flowers of the field underfoot. He can feel the restlessness coming off her like waves and he pauses.
She regrets it. He should turn around and leave, spare them both from the awkward conversation she is about to start, but she catches his eye before he can move and then she’s running. When she reaches him, she is slightly breathless.
“I need you to take me with you,” she says. “Now.”
He stares. The words are not what he was expecting.
“My mother,” she starts, pauses. “My mother has informed me that I am to leave on a ship today. The king has requested the presence of his bride.” The last word is uttered in contempt, but Hades still feels a hand tighten around both his lungs. It is hard to breathe. He can’t help her. He can’t help them.
“I have nowhere to take you,” he says, his voice sounding far away but even to his ears; steady. He is not sure how he manages.
He can feel the shift in energy. She is no longer anxious. It is something different entirely.
“Liar,” she spits at him and he takes a step back, feels the word like a human rather than the god he is.
She is always making him forget he is the god he is.
“You take me for a fool,” she says quietly. “You always have.” She takes a step towards him, raises her hand, and Hades braces himself for a blow. Instead, her fingertips are gentle when they meet his cheek, her thumb tracing over the groove of this lower lip. There is no anger left, but a small smile on her face he doesn’t quite understand – until he does.
“Hades,” she whispers, and it sounds like a prayer on her tongue, like a secret she has kept in the pocket of her cheek that is spilling over like honey. There is no doubt in her voice, no fear, no disgust. He thinks he could hear nothing but that word falling from her mouth for the rest of eternity and be satisfied. His head is spinning.
“Hades,” she says again. “Take me home.”
And so he does.
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She hates every moment she spends in the Underworld, they say. Every second, she passes the time thinking of when she can be returned to Earth for those few short months. Spring and summer, when she is here, they say. Winter and fall when she is with him.
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“I love it here,” Persephone says and smiles, and Hades thinks, I love you here. I loved you there.
She loves it here. For now, that is enough. For now, they fall into each other and do not think about the wrath of the gods or the things people will surely say. For now, they have each other.
They will figure out the rest in time.
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They are wrong of course. They always are.
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