Chapter Text
Everybody knows that walls have ears. Fewer people know that they have voices, too.
Voices to whisper, to spread advice, rumors: tales of a girl who’d stolen from the king. A girl who had things from up above, who’d use them to help you remember.
Most hadn’t heard. The whispers weren’t loud. Most who had heard dismissed it. Wishful thinking. Legend. How would anyone manage that? Waste of time, waste of energy.
But if you asked the right questions, at the right times, you’d find that hushed as they were, those voices were consistent. Pointed to the same person, the same place. Legends had thousands of versions. Truth was singular.
He was a person who asked the right questions.
He didn’t know much else about who he was. He couldn’t remember how or why he’d come to Hadestown, his name, a single thing about his past. But he remembered the questions. Focused on them like a light in the darkness, showing a path forward. He repeated the answers to himself all the time, so as not to let the fog take them, making up little melodies to better embed them in his mind.
She’s a miner.
She stays in a small house near Lethe. One of the ones no one wants.
Rest of the time, you can find her in the bar with the red door. You know the one?
She’s got this blue coat. Wears it when she’s not working so people can find her.
No promises.
He thought by now he’d found out enough, enough to trust, enough to try. So he was in that bar. The one with the red door. Watching a girl in a blue coat tap her fingers against her cup. Trying to figure out how to approach.
A person at a table next to him leaned over. “You want to talk to her?”
“Yes,” he answered automatically, and glanced at them. “Are… do you, too…?”
A flash of teeth. “Nah, brother. Already did. Just go over.”
He nodded, started to-
“One more thing.”
He looked back.
The person said, “You’ll owe a favor.”
He added that to his list. A favor. He could do that, he thought, for memory. He walked to the bar. The girl didn’t look up. “Um,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Hello.” The polite thing to do would be to introduce himself, but he couldn’t exactly do that.
She glanced at him. “Hey.” Back to her drink. “Heard weather’s bad up above.”
Another part of the rumors. A code phrase, to make sure people were there on business. He answered, “Any way the wind blows.”
She hummed. “Let me finish this.”
He did. He felt kind of awkward, just standing there. He studied her as he waited. Long dark hair flecked with dust, like everything was down there. Brown hands calloused from work. Tension in her shoulders like she was ready to leap up and run in an instant. Only the last one might suggest something different about her: most people in Hadestown were too exhausted for that. There was something… familiar…
“Stop staring at me,” she said without looking at him.
He felt himself blush. “Oh, no, I wasn’t- I mean, not because- well, you are pretty, but-” What. He decided it was best to stop talking for now.
She smiled a bit and drained her cup. “Are you always like this?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Come on.”
He followed her out of the bar, through the neon-lit streets, down to the white river. Several small buildings were there, most of them uninhabited: people wanted to stay far away from Lethe, even if it claimed them all sooner or later. Usually sooner.
“Why do you live here?”
“Not because I like small talk.”
“No, I’m- curious. Aren’t you scared?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t affect you any more than usual unless you touch it. And I don’t.”
“And it keeps everyone away?”
She glanced back, gave him a smile. “Exactly.”
She pulled open the door to the house, opened a closet. It was filled with strange, miscellaneous objects. “Right,” she said, gesturing to them. “Here’s how this works. These are all things that Hades took when people got here. I took them back. And one of them might be yours.” She looked back at him. “Might. That’s rule one. No promises. No guarantees.”
“How did you get them?”
“That’s for me to know.” She paused. “Maybe you after. Rule two is that if we find something of yours, you owe me. And you help me with this at least once.”
“Okay. So do I just look…?”
“No.” She leaned into the closet, pulled something out. A string?
“Yes,” she said, and he realized he’d said that out loud. “Not a normal one. The… you know, the Fates visit the King and Lady sometimes, I used to work at their manor…”
“You took a string of fate? Whose is it?”
“No one’s now,” she said. “It was already cut. I kind of think they let me.”
This was the most insane, amazing person he’d ever met.
She handed it to him. “Come back tomorrow.”
He blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. If you carry it around for a bit, it’ll think it’s yours, and it’ll want to find anything else that’s yours.” She waved. “Goodbye.”
It… made sense. He left, wrapping the string around his wrist a few times to make sure he didn’t lose it. When the next morning came, he was at her door before people were called for work.
She laughed upon opening the door. “Not one for waiting, then?”
“Is this too early? Will it still-”
“Should work. Come on.”
He entered, she opened her closet and explained more. “If you find anything, it still works differently for everyone. It might help you remember from before, it might just help you hold on to your memory now. That’s what it was for me. No promises, not even your name.” She gestured for him to take out the string. He did, and watched in awe as it actually started to uncurl, reaching for something.
That something was the girl herself.
“Your… coat?” he said, frowning in confusion.
“Not the best way to get me to take my clothes off,” she said, white teeth flashing in a smirk for a second when he turned bright red before fading into a frown of her own. “No, that makes no sense. I wonder…” She reached into her pocket, pulled something out. He caught a flash of red before her fist closed around it, hiding it from view. The string followed it into the air. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he could hear relief and disappointment mingle in her exhale. “I was right. It thinks you’re me.” She slipped her hand back into her pocket. “Not sure how, I mean, I clean it in the Lethe, for gods’ sakes, but…” A shrug. “Sorry.”
He had to ask. “Are you sure?”
“Only explanation.”
“Is it? What if- what if whatever your thing is belongs to me too? It could be, maybe we knew each other, before-”
“No.” Her tone was sharp. She shook her head. “It’s not yours. I’m not yours.”
“I didn’t mean to say you were, it’s just-” It was just that she felt so familiar. It was just that he’d been so hopeful. It was just that he saw that guarded look in her eyes, and some instinct from long before they’d met wanted it to soften. “May I at least see it?”
She hesitated, but pulled the item back out of her pocket. It was a flower, a brighter red than anything he’d seen down there and dry almost to crumbling. Her hand curled around it slightly, ready to snatch it back.
He extended one hand out in the same way, questioning, waiting. They stood there for what seemed like ages before she placed the flower in his palm. He brought his other hand up to cradle it, and oh- oh-
“You were standing here,” he said suddenly, reaching out to tug her towards him.
She jerked away. “Hey. Hands off.”
“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, but can you please-” He gestured to the place he meant, on his right side. She moved into it, wary. So close, too far, so close. He bowed his head, trying to figure out what it was. “The angle is wrong.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I remember you were above me.” Her eyes narrowed. “I remember. How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and then, words tumbling out of him: “The song’s not finished though.”
“What song?”
He paused. “I…” It had just felt right. Some ingrained memory, some script he now couldn’t call up. He dropped the flower as he dug his hands into his hair, trying to think. “I don’t know that either. It was- important-”
“Hey.” She crouched down to pick up the flower, passed it back to him. “That was something. We had something. Come on.”
He followed her into a different room, a simple one: a bed and a small desk. She pulled over the desk and pointed to it. “Climb on that.”
“Are you sure it can support me?”
“You need to be higher up. It’s the best thing I have. Do it.”
He did. The desk creaked in a worrying way, but he ignored it for now. “Now what?”
She studied him, critical. “Hold the flower like that again.”
“Come a few steps closer.”
“Crouch down- there-”
She inhaled, sharp, as all the pieces fit together, as it came rushing back. He breathed in more slowly, and turned to her. Her face was the exact same as it had been five minutes ago, but now- now there were the memories of seeing that face in the sun, backlit by the cold sky instead of the wooden walls of a bar. He said, “It’s you.”
“It’s me,” she murmured, and looked up at him, eyes full of wonder. “Orpheus…”
Orpheus smiled. “Eurydice.”