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He was a young god when she was born, though there is no passage of time for him. He will be the same for all the ages of eternity, a man flowing between youth and maturity, all stages of life in the form of Death. By some turn of fate, his was the first hand to touch Demeter’s child when she was presented to the pantheon, a brush of his fingertips over the baby girl’s soft curls, and her tiny hand grasped him, and he was lost. Inarticulate and shallow as an infant’s mind could be, he knew the feeling of her thoughts mingling with his from the instant she held his fingertips, and he knew fascination.
She grows, as all things must, save him, and her form settles into that of a young woman, wrapped in the golden light of growing things. She is lovely, though the likes of him are never welcome to the sight. Her suitors are in no small number either, dozens of mortals, swayed by the beauty of her power and fair face, as well as the gods. Both Hermes, with his easy wit and swift grin, and Apollo, strong-limbed and burnished by the sun, make a try for her affections, and they might have even succeeded. But Demeter is steadfast in preserving her daughter, like one of her own flowers, pressed and immortalized, too fragile to touch.
The whisper of her mind calls for him, constantly, since their first meeting. It is a faint thing, no more than impulses and images and emotion, but it is there nonetheless at the back of his thoughts. He does not need to speak with her to know of her loneliness, imposed by her own mother, nor does he need to find her to know she resides at the widest part of the world, where summer and spring hardly make way for winter, and all is blooming and lush. It could be a desert for all she cares for it, her heart speeding when she is called upon to waken the flowers from the snows, tasting freedom and power for fleeting moments.
His own heart comes to life for her, aching in the wake of the ice that fractures and splits with its warming. She is his opposite, or should be, but every part of her calls to him until the realms of the dead feel more barren than he has ever known in the absence of her. Death is above all things a release from the mortal plane, but it is misery with all her life tormenting him, just out of reach, and his dark kingdom suffers for it. They were not meant to suffer in death, only find peace, and yet Hades trails sorrow in his footsteps where once had been neutral stillness. Something must be done.
The appeal he makes to Zeus is belated. He has writhed under the force of his need for too long, neglected his rule, and Zeus is swift to grant his request. If Demeter will not allowed her daughter to be courted, then she will be given by her father. The old ways may have their faults, but there is power in the taking of a bride, and Hades will do it justice.
He waits – a talent, for what does Death do but wait? – and when the time comes he is ready. He goes to the split in the earth that will allow his action, and to his shock and deepest pleasure, she jumps.
-
Rey has long since grown tired of the life she is allowed by her mother. She has walked the band of the equator for decades, but she has never been allowed more than a glimpse of what the world is. Her power flows through her like rivers with no path to the sea, clogged and wanting, and she watches her mother squander her own power as well. She could turn the world with her hands, yet she only blesses the few buds and stalks that she passes by and is unswayed by the life that surrounds her free wandering through the world. Rey struggles to call it jealousy, but it lingers in the corners of her frustration, tempered by a daughter’s love but never gone.
In truth, she would have flown with Apollo had she known what her future held. And perhaps he had known, patron of oracles as he is, that she would be condemned to this small space of a life. Perhaps his declarations of love had been born of sympathy more than anything else. But she had been foolish, a flighty girl afraid of leaving her mother’s footsteps, and she had brushed away his advances. It may have been a mistake she will never escape.
As she has grown, the curiosity of the outside world has gnawed at her, whispering dark and tempting from the unknown. Rey trails fingers over sleeping blossoms in the mountains and stares into the depths of their shadows, wanting. When she is spirited away at her mother’s insistence, it grows more difficult every time to leave behind the cool and shivery thrill of the shadows that hardly exist in her home.
It is gently rolling hills that offer her escape, when the time comes. A landscape of pale green rises and falls, and in one place a pit, deep and terrifying in its vastness, and Rey does not think before she jumps. She does not stop to wonder where she will fall, only that the light and heat of her mother has never been blackness like this and if anything can be her escape, this will be it. She thinks perhaps all that waits for her at the bottom is death, but when she finds herself in his arms, it is not what she expected.
“Well.”
That is all he says, his pale face impassive holding restless eyes. They are the most remarkable thing about him, and something in Rey comes to life at the feel of his arms around her, holding her knees and shoulders where he stands. The rush of feeling is like nothing she’s known, but then it is everything she’s ever known - the drag of the darkness in tall mountains, the chaos of life in the peace of death, and her hands clutch at his shoulders at the fear he might let her go.
He doesn’t. Neither does he speak, though Rey doesn’t want that of him on the short trip to where his horse stands, pawing the ground, and he places her beside him in silence, his arm a band around her as he flicks the reins. The trip to his kingdom is short, as easy as falling asleep and just as painless. She gasps when she can feel the heaviness of the underworld envelop them, but it is not with fear.
Anticipation thrums in her veins when they stop and he takes her into his arms once more, though she would go willingly. The trailing white fabric of her dress mingles with the dark of his robes as he carries her inside, and Rey knows she is a bride brought over the threshold. She could nearly laugh at this. She has had many admirers, all turned away before they could be truly considered, but he does not wait for her consideration, he takes. And in the boldness of his taking, she gives.
He makes no promises to her, only brings her to his bed and follows her down. When he sheds his gloves, black leather revealing white flesh, and touches her face, she is overcome by what she feels. It’s a swirl of emotion, desperate wanting to mirror her own, devotion and lust and terrible jealousy. She can feel him in her mind and there has never been anything like it. She can only believe it is the power of her life calling to his strength in death, wrapping them around each other so she can sense even the echo of him sensing her .
“Don’t be afraid,” he says, his voice deep and close, the second, third, and fourth words he has spoken to her. “I feel it, too.”
It settles her, as she knows he settles as well, his eyes betraying the turmoil inside him where the rest of his body is steady and sure, inevitable. Rey doesn’t try to resist the inexorable pull of him, instead twines her hands in the black tumble of his hair and brings him to her.
“What do I call you?” she asks in the wake of his kiss, breathless and flushed.
Many answers pass through his head, and Rey can hear all of them flick by through their strange connection. Husband. Hades. Death. Until he finds the one he likes best, a personal name that he rarely remembers.
“Ben.”
It is a small name, casual, and it shouldn’t be able to contain him, all that he is, but it is this small piece that lodges in Rey’s heart and drives her to know she will never abandon him. He has nearly forgotten he had such a name, created and defined by his titles and the kingdom he can never leave. She will hold the name inside herself and it will never pass her lips but to him.
It passes her lips many times that night, whispered and shouted into the cold darkness of his room. He is attentive and shocking, so selfish in her pleasure. He takes of her by giving, driving her to heights she had never bothered to imagine between a man and a woman, a god and a goddess. His devotion is shrouded in shadow so that Rey feels deliciously corrupted, marked and claimed as the night goes on, this eternal night she cannot wish for the dawn of.
It must end, of course, and it does so with Ben buried inside her, body and mind, unwilling to retreat the inches he could. Rey wraps herself around him, glad for the closeness and they do not speak. His thoughts bathe in hers, sharing and giving what they are, his misery and darkness, her frustration and light. He spins her palaces in her mind, promises of what she could have, all that he will give her, standing at his side as his queen.
His imagination is a thing of beauty. Under his direction, she can see how her power could expand and flourish, eclipsing what she had once been capable of. She knows life and growth as intimately as he does death, but she has never turned over the possibility of their shared borders as he has. He has thought of her in detail, longed for her, and his desire is intoxicating. He wants her body, her mind, her strength and her curiosity, and she is hard pressed to find a part of her that does not call to him. The frigid edge of her annoyance when found makes his breath catch, and he revels in her wrath, surging against her once more before he can bear to part himself from her.
She lets him leave with no fear that he will fail to return and the cloying sweetness of the thought he will let her roam wherever she will go. It is not his rule that keeps her in the underworld, but her own. She roams his kingdom with the knowledge it is hers as well, and relishes the sensation of owning her own home. She has been directed and kept for centuries, and the freedom of it fills her bottom to top, so that she loves the grey gardens and slow moving river more ardently than she has any blossom fallen from her hand.
Nothing grows here but few things, the asphodel familiar to her while the others are all foreign. The fields of asphodel bloom eternal, unlike the earthly flowers Rey had called to life so many times in winter’s retreat. The fruits of the pale trees here are dark and heavy, round red skins with flesh inside that bleeds. She breaks one open in her hands on the morning of her wedding night and turns the shining seeds in her hands.
“Persephone.” Her formal name shocks her, unwanted where it comes from the diminished gardener, tending to his ghostly crop. “You do not belong here.”
He must mistake her slow pace for sorrow, instead of the wonder it is inspired by. Her legs are heavy, the faint ghost of her husband between them, and she has taken her time this morning, but not due to melancholy. The man’s assurance is unwelcome, well intentioned as it is.
“Your lady mother will surely come for you,” he goes on, eyes dropped in deference to her bare feet. “But if you eat the fruit of the dead, you can never leave.”
Rey considers the bleeding fruit in her hand, considers the temptation of the ripe juice, and brings a handful of fleshy seeds to her mouth. They break against her tongue, tart and satisfying, and Rey spits the stripped seeds at her feet. The gardener’s gaze flicks up at the sight of them before dropping once more.
“Do not speak my name again,” she tells him, sharp and cold, borrowing her husband’s regality and feeling the sparks of his approval in her mind. “Tell all who you see. I am your queen, and you shall call me nothing else.”
His house is full of guests, none of which speak to her when Rey makes her way back. He returns to her, eager as before, and Rey digs nails into his skin, insatiable. He wonders at her and she is radiant under his attention.
-
She learns of the devastation that her mother has wrought in the world in her absence, and Rey is vindictively pleased. Only with the abduction of her prize has Demeter embraced the fullness of her power, blanketing the mortal world in snow and dark. It lasts, as the winter season never has, and Rey clings to her husband, her fear growing as the winter never fades. She can feel the roots of all the growing things in her bones, dying slowly, and knows it cannot remain this way. They will take her - her father if not her mother, and so she grasps at Ben with desperation should some night be the last.
Zeus is the one who comes for her, for the sake of the mortals wasting and dying the longer her mother’s sorrow and rage drags on. She is the goddess of spring, and though her heart is buried here in the ground with her husband, she has a duty. The world will not turn as it should if she does not stifle her mother’s hurt and usher in the growing season. Still, she is reluctant to leave, and she argues her case, hand in hand with Hades, his towering strength at her back.
“I have eaten from the gardens,” she tells her father, a last attempt to stay. The hand in hers tightens, fiercely pleased with her, and Rey silently preens under his approval. She shows Zeus the fruit, picks out the seeds and counts. She considers lying when he asks how many she’s eaten, but mumbles out seven .
She is brought back to the mortal realm in the end, with the promise she will be returned. Ben is still as always, a pillar of strength, pale skin in black robes, but his eyes hold a storm within them. Her heart is pounding fit to burst out of her chest as she goes unwillingly, their connection stretching thin as the distance grows. It never snaps, not even when Rey stands before her mother and accepts her embrace. He is there with her when she must smile past her resentment, a pacing, growling presence that it soothes Rey to attend to.
He is with her as she follows her mother, flowers blooming in her wake. He is with her as she paces the globe, setting all to rights. When she stops to look back, there are new flowers where she has walked; nettles and belladonna and all manner of strangling weeds. They make her smile in spite of the frown they draw from her mother’s now-creased face. Demeter has never looked old, but there are lines in her face that had grown in the time Persephone was away.
She does love her mother, of course, and she can recall that fact with more ease as the time passes, but she does not cease to think of Ben, waiting for her below. Her longing for her husband grows along with her flowers until she is fairly faint of breath as October turns to November. Her homecoming is within her reach, and her flight to Hades will be swift when she is finally allowed to make it.
Hermes brings her the news, fastest of the gods, and Rey is thankful to her father for the thoughtful favor of speed. Hermes escorts her to the gates of the underworld as well, his smile not coming as easily as it has in the past. Rey pauses to assure him with her feet on the steps.
“Don’t miss me, Poe,” she says, her smile too wide for her face. “I’m so happy with him, you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“If you say so,” he says uneasily, but her familiarity and sincerity must reach him, because he squeezes her shoulder and urges her on. Rey nearly trips down the steps, her feet lighter the farther she descends, until she takes the last steps at a run, Ben in her sight. He catches her in his arms, and Rey wonders if he will do this every time, catch her as she falls, and hopes he will.
His mouth is on hers in an instant, a kiss before they are breathing each other in, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed. She would have no chance of reaching him under her own power, but he holds her there against his chest, and Rey feels him flooding back into her mind, quietly joyful at their reunion.
“I’ve missed you,” he mutters, too genuine for volume, too intimate for any space between them.
“As I’ve missed you,” she says. He lets her down, hands at her waist for a lingering moment before leading her back to their world, and Rey walks with the steps of a queen returning to her realm, powerful and welcomed and home .