Work Text:
The way Persephone finds the girl will change slightly, from time to time. The more general aspects remain the same—she wears the coveralls and heavy boots of a worker. A fine layer of soot and ash coats her bare skin. She sits awake while the others are passed out from exhaustion all around her. But the smaller things, the tiny details, shift depending on what else has shifted before then. This time, Persephone hears the girl sobbing in a manner unlike any of the other times. This time, she holds her hands in front of her as if something should be there.
This time, Persephone steps into the light.
Part of her knows that she can’t change this. Not in the irreversible way that she longs for. This song will repeat itself over and over again, and if she tries to change it, it will simply bend to make room for her and then swallow her again, moving on as if she had barely done anything different at all. At most, her actions will be a single thread woven into the fabric of this story, adding something small to the cycles, something that might remain and color things from this point onward just enough that it can be noticed but not enough that it can alter what happens.
So, knowing she can’t change this, she does what she can.
She sits down beside the girl.
As she tucks her legs underneath her, the girl turns to stare at her in confusion. She’s lost most of her memories just as all workers do, but the workers are not allowed to forget that Persephone is their Lady, or that her husband is their King. The girl knows just as well as Persephone does that it isn’t normal for the two of them to be sitting next to each other like this. She doesn’t remember that they’ve done this before, in the world up above.
The girl opens her mouth, but she hesitates before she speaks. “He told me I wouldn’t feel a thing,” she murmurs, and the quiet admission makes her eyes shut again. She wipes the tears on her face. It leaves messy tracks through the dirt.
“I know,” says Persephone.
The girl sniffles. Examines Persephone with her head bowed. “You do,” she says, her eyes questioning.
Persephone nods. “He’s…changed, from the man I fell in love with.”
It’s not often that she truly allows herself to sit with that knowledge. She’s always aware of it, both with the shock of seeing it for the first time and the weight of recognizing it each time this story is retold, but typically she doesn’t like to remain aware. She would rather drown in other things—things that really aren’t much more pleasant, but things she keeps trying anyway. She turns to her version of the wind. She turns to the rain she has on tap. She turns to the sunshine up on the shelf.
This is one of the rare times where she’s fully lucid. She lowers her head and forces herself to become familiar with who her husband is now, and she gathers up her resolve to think of what he was before.
“When we first met,” Persephone begins, perhaps more haltingly than she means to, “it was in a field of flowers. I remember thinking he looked ridiculous, at first. Those fields were my home, but they weren’t his, and you could see that just by how he stood.”
The girl tilts her head, listening intently.
“Then he opened his mouth, and he started to sing.” Persephone smiles at the memory. “There were no words, just a melody. But I understood. I felt what he wanted to say.”
Persephone lets out a quiet laugh. Beside her, the girl has gone stiff, her eyes glazed over as she’s taken somewhere else.
“I can’t remember the last time I heard him sing like that,” says Persephone, and the smile slips off her face.
When the girl speaks, her voice is little more than a whisper. “A field of flowers,” she breathes, bringing one hand to her throat. Something about the words makes her sob again.
Persephone knows exactly what it is. She was there. She’d sat basking in the sun and closed her eyes and listened to the sound of quiet laughter while this girl and the boy she loved enjoyed the warmth. Some cycles, she would keep her eyes open, watching the way the two of them brushed against each other or caught each other’s hands. The girl fiddled with the bandanna around the boy’s neck. The boy ducked down and kissed her temple. The girl retaliated with a kiss on the corner of his mouth. They both laughed again, drifting naturally toward each other as they walked through the field.
Each time, it reminded her so much of her early days with Hades that she felt almost nauseous.
But this time is the first time that she sits with a girl who is so much like herself and sees how she mourns a forgotten love, matching Persephone beat for beat.
“There was…someone,” the girl says thickly. “There was someone with me. I knew him, I’d met him before. And he…”
She can’t seem to articulate anything past that.
But Persephone understands. So she puts her hand over the girl’s where it sits on the ground and says, “I know.”
The girl looks into Persephone’s eyes, and realization passes over her face. For just a moment, she recognizes what this is. The story they’re in. The way it repeats. The way it has never included this conversation between them before, and might never again.
The quiet sorrow that follows after that realization is enough for Persephone to reach with her other hand, take the girl’s shoulder, and bring her close. She presses the girl’s head gently into the crook of her neck and strokes her hair. The girl shivers at her touch, because in these brief minutes where she’s remembering everything, she recognizes this hold. It feels like a lifetime ago by now, but Persephone had found the girl up top when she’d dropped her mask and started to worry about what would come after summer left them. The girl told her about how she was hearing the whispering again and how they were telling her she needed to move on and leave the boy that she wanted to protect. It had resonated with Persephone, someone who felt similarly flighty.
“But I don’t think I could ever leave,” the girl had said through her tears. “I could never leave him. Not the way I used to leave. So I don’t know why I’m still hearing them. I don’t know why I’m…”
She’d trailed off, and Persephone had taken one long look at her as she tried to stifle her crying, then pulled her into her arms.
“You’ll be alright,” she told her softly. She knew what would happen. She knew that the girl would leave, because that was how the story went. She knew that the boy would not hear her call his name and she would be desperate enough to let Hades take her.
But she still held onto hope that maybe, just maybe things would change. She saw enough of herself in this girl that she had to hope she would stay up top. Because every time she didn’t—every time she emerged from the train and Persephone caught sight of her through the smoke and steam—she realized that if someone so much like herself could be pushed to a fate like this, then there wasn’t much reason for her to try at all.
In the present, the girl reaches up like she wants to hold Persephone back. She can’t bring herself to do it. Her hands drop back into her lap, and she shuts her eyes tightly.
“He’s coming for you,” Persephone tells her.
He’ll be here soon. His arrival to Hadestown is the only thing that never changes from cycle to cycle. He shows up at the exact same time. His shirt is discolored from sweat and soaked through with blood, and the fabric is worn down from the way his lyre strap falls against it. There are cuts on his hands. His trousers are dirty and suffering from wear at the knees. He can barely walk in a straight line. Among the first words out of his mouth is the girl’s name, and he starts running when he sees her.
The girl nods. “I know,” she says.
Persephone reaches over and lifts the girl’s chin, looking deeply into her eyes. Then she stands, not bothering to brush the dirt off of the hem of her dress.
Right as she’s stepping back into the shadows, she hears a familiar voice, calling out to the girl.
“Orpheus,” the girl responds, her smile coming through in her voice.
“Eurydice!” Orpheus cries.
They crash into each other, Eurydice jumping into Orpheus’s arms, and Orpheus spins her around, nearly falling over. They begin to speak over one another, pausing and trying to find the right rhythm. They don’t let go of each other. Eurydice’s hands remain firmly on Orpheus’s arms, and Orpheus’s hands find her waist.
Persephone takes in a deep breath and prepares herself for what she knows will happen next.