Chapter Text
The first thing Eurydice notices when she steps out behind Orpheus is that it’s so much colder than she remembers.
She keeps her eyes on Orpheus’s back, but she still falters for a moment as she leaves the heat of Hadestown behind her. She’d gotten used to that heat. She’d forgotten the cold entirely. It was what she had wanted, for a while, and she was alright with it until she realized that there was so much she’d missed on her contract.
She hugs herself as if that will make her any warmer as the last of the heat from the furnace fades. Orpheus is walking carefully, taking steps like he’s thinking about each of them individually, lit dimly by the lights of Hadestown behind them. He could barely stay upright by the time he got to her before, and it’s a wonder he has any strength to keep walking, let alone make the journey all the way back to the surface. He keeps adjusting his lyre strap, trying to find an arrangement that won’t aggravate his shoulders.
They should have waited before they set out. They could have given Orpheus time to rest and Eurydice could have cleaned the blood from the leather of his lyre strap, scrubbed it out of his shirt. Persephone could have soothed his wounds and wrapped him up and given them supplies, provided for them the way she was meant to.
Both of them jumped at the chance to leave, and neither of them thought about waiting at all. Orpheus had sung the song and it had worked. He’d brought spring and reminded the gods of their love. They could go back to the surface together, even if it wasn’t the way they’d planned. And who knows if it was even an option to stay and prepare at all?
Orpheus was never a person who thought far ahead anyway. He often jumped into things, acting on what his heart told him. So in this scenario, he does exactly what he always does. He walks. And Eurydice can’t let him do it alone.
She follows.
Eurydice isn’t sure how long they’ve been walking before Orpheus starts to turn around the first time. It feels so soon that she nearly sobs.
She stops in her tracks, and Orpheus whips his head back to the front, gasping sharply. The line of workers behind Eurydice nearly crashes into her, and their silence is full of fear. If the person they’re supposed to follow fails, what are they supposed to do?
“Orpheus,” Eurydice whispers. She doesn’t know what she plans to tell him.
But Orpheus shows no sign that he even heard her speak. He stands very still, shoulders near his ears. Eurydice shifts, boots scraping against the pavement, wishing she could see his face. Orpheus shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and starts walking again.
She follows.
He stops again after another stretch, and he’s still for so long that Eurydice says his name. She tries pressing forward. She wants to put a hand on his shoulder, feel his hand over hers, feel him shudder as her fingers graze his blistering skin through the worn-down fabric of his shirt. She can’t get close enough for that. She can’t even close enough to reach out and brush his back with her fingertips, though she strains her arms with the effort. There’s still multiple arm-lengths of distance between them.
Orpheus takes a few steps again, and Eurydice follows. He stops. She does too. He waits. Takes a few more steps. Stops again.
He’s panicking, his breathing echoing back to her as it bounces off the stone walls, but he’s trying his hardest to pretend it doesn’t exist. He attempts to even it out again. “Eurydice,” he calls, shifting on his feet, and her name comes out so small that it hurts her.
“Orpheus,” she calls back. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
She hears her words reflected back at her. As if they’re hitting a barrier. Orpheus nearly falls, knees buckling. He reaches up, twisting the strap of his lyre. He adjusts it once. Then moves it back to its original position, then takes it off and tries it on the other shoulder.
“I’m right here,” Eurydice repeats.
She realizes that she’s no longer aware of the workers behind her. She wonders if this is what Orpheus feels. Did they declare this a lost cause, turn around and go back to where they had at least something to call their own? How does she know if it’s just the two of them, now?
Orpheus makes a noise in the back of his throat, a mix between a whimper and a sob. He lifts his head and examines whatever is above them, a cave or night sky without stars; Eurydice doesn’t care, because she isn’t looking up there and that doesn’t matter to her. Her eyes are only for Orpheus, for the curve of his cheek that she can just barely see, the closest she can get to looking at his face.
He sniffles, drops his head again. His shoulders fall. He starts walking again.
She follows.
Orpheus starts to make a winding path, moving away from the tracks and then back again. The light is dim, and Eurydice is afraid when she can’t find him for a moment. Then he drifts back into her view, and she tries to get as close to him as she can, so she won’t lose sight of him.
He loses his footing a few times before catching and steadying himself again. Each time Eurydice reaches out, as if she could catch him. The logical side of her knows she can’t. She reaches anyway.
One of those times, Orpheus pauses and just stands there, breathing heavily. He takes a step to the side. Waits. Takes a step back. His head turns in her direction, not enough to count, but enough that Eurydice’s breath catches in her throat. Orpheus is just as aware of the risk as she is, stopping himself before he gets too far. His brow is furrowed, and he stares at the ground. He sways on his feet, but he starts walking again, even though he can’t seem to balance correctly.
She follows.
“Do you remember when I walked in on you?” Eurydice asks. “That night during the summer?”
They sit apart from each other. This is the closest Eurydice can get to him without feeling like she’s being pulled backward, without pain exploding from her gut and ripping her in two. It’s uncomfortable even with this much distance between them, but she’ll bear the discomfort if she can get a few inches closer. Orpheus is on his side, curled up with his lyre near his feet, shivering.
Eurydice knows that he can’t hear her. He’s stopped being able to hear her for a while now. But she keeps talking to him anyway. She’s more chatty than she’s ever been, just in case something will get through. She pretends she’s having a conversation with him. If she closes her eyes, she’s somewhere else, her head in his lap while he combs through her hair with his fingers, sunlight falling on her face and a soft breeze blowing across her skin.
“I walked in and the entire floor was covered in paper scraps, and you were so embarrassed about it,” Eurydice continues. “You said it was supposed to be a surprise.”
Orpheus keeps shivering. Eurydice imagines that he’s perking up at the story, a smile reaching his face because he remembers it too.
“Those were the worst paper flowers I think I’ve ever seen in my life,” she snorts. “I loved them.”
Silence.
Say something, she pleads.
“Maybe you could make me those again,” she says aloud. “When we get out.”
In her mind, Orpheus blushes from leftover shame and nods, ducking his head in the way he always does when she teases him. Are you sure? he asks, grinning.
Of course I’m sure, Eurydice responds. They were terrible. I want to see if you can even replicate that.
Mind-Orpheus laughs. The Orpheus several meters in front of her sits up and reaches for his lyre. He doesn’t put it on immediately; he stares at it, brushes a hand over the strings, waits like he’s listening for something, and then stands. He shoulders the lyre—he’s long since stopped trying to keep it from reopening his wounds. He walks.
She follows.
She hears him sing the song and she longs to sing it back to him. She does—she sings it in different ways, softly and tentatively enough that she doesn’t even hear the melody echo back to her, and then loudly enough that the notes turn strained, and then humming along with him, and then adding her own harmony to his melody.
He leaves space for her to sing. It breaks her heart every time. Because each time, she fills it, and she believes for a moment that he’ll hear her.
And he doesn’t. Each time, he lets the pause last a little longer, then steadies himself again and sings the next line with an uncertain, wobbling voice that doesn’t suit him.
Eventually he stops singing altogether. He doesn’t speak. The only sound Eurydice hears is his breathing, his footsteps, the sound of his lyre thumping rhythmically against his back with each stride. He simply walks.
She follows.
“What will we do first?” she asks him.
She tries to think of what his answer would be. Orpheus has always surprised her, so this is something that she believes she can’t answer for him. Eurydice pretends that she can feel a hand in hers; his hand, fingers calloused from the lyre, making their arms swing as they walk.
“Do you know,” Eurydice says in answer to her own question, “that I have no idea?”
That’s alright, Mind-Orpheus tells her, dropping his head on top of hers. He turns his face into her hair and gives it a kiss. We have time to figure that out.
Eurydice reaches out to the Orpheus in front of her. His posture has become less and less confident with each passing hour. Now his shoulders are caved, and his hands never leave his lyre. She’s seen the way they shake when he’s not keeping them occupied.
“Hold on,” she tells him. “Hold on tight.”
Orpheus says nothing. He keeps walking.
She follows.
After being in a world of pavement and rails and stone for so long—and, before that, a world of industrial cacophony—it takes Eurydice a while to place the sound she’s hearing.
Birds.
She blinks, and she realizes that the light she’s seeing is a lot brighter than what her eyes have grown accustomed to during this walk. This is not low lamplight. She doesn’t have to strain her eyes to see the white (once-white, really) of Orpheus’s shirt in the dark. She squints at the brightness.
“Orpheus,” she laughs. The birds sing a seven-note melody that Eurydice knows by heart. The sunlight reaches her fingertips if she holds her arms out. She lets that little bit of warmth seep into her, and it’s so much better than the heat the furnace gave her. This is spring. “Orpheus, you did it—”
He’s halfway into the sunlight when he turns around.
Her arms drop to her sides, and she sobs at the look in his eyes. They’re wider than she’s ever seen them, his irises dark, and he’s terrified. It almost feels like the first time they met, staring at each other and waiting for the other to speak. And for a moment, it feels like another time—and a time before that, and a time before that. Familiarity settles into Eurydice’s bones.
“It’s you,” Orpheus says.
“It’s me.”
She doesn’t notice that she’s fully crying until she repeats his name and it barely comes out. Orpheus crumples, but Eurydice smiles.
She knows that she won’t be able to have this. The spring that she’s been waiting so long to see is not hers to enjoy, but she can’t find it in her to be very bitter about that. She’ll mourn it. She’ll think of what could be. But she knows that at least there’s one person out there who can enjoy it on her behalf.
There’s so many things she wants to tell him. Pick flowers and write songs like you used to. Paint the sky in all its stages. It’s alright if the colors bleed together, if you can’t get it right. You always said I was better at that sort of thing. But you can learn. You’ve got the hand for it, I’ve seen it. Draw the leaves on the trees. Start a garden, the way we talked about doing. Bring my sketchbook out there when things start growing and fill up the rest of the pages with what you see.
She can’t speak. She can only look at Orpheus. She lifts a hand, despite how it hurts enough that if she wasn’t expecting it, the pain would have her folding in two. Despite how she knows that even if Orpheus reaches back, they still won’t be able to touch.
“Eurydice,” Orpheus says, hoarse and full of guilt.
There’s an unnameable part of her that expects it, but Eurydice is still caught off-guard when the ground rumbles and opens up beneath her feet. She starts to fall, and she screams, eyes darting up to lock on Orpheus. He’s trying to get to her, to catch her, but he’s not fast enough. The space between them is just wide enough that he can’t make it in time, and in the back of her mind, Eurydice wonders if it was engineered that way.
She wakes on the factory floor, with the Queen of the Underworld at her side.
Persephone doesn’t say anything to her, but she sits up a little straighter when she sees Eurydice is conscious. There’s a suitcase by her side. She grabs it by the handle and stands. She looks back at Eurydice one last time before she disappears onto a train.
Eurydice watches the train leave. She looks up at the ceiling high above her and thinks of the distance between that ceiling and the world above. She thinks about Orpheus.
She imagines him crying for her, mourning for a while. She hopes that his mourning isn’t too long. He’ll miss everything he brought into the world. She doesn’t want that for him. She wants him to walk outside and savor it. Maybe every so often he can think of her, reminded by a springtime scent or her watercolor set.
The bell rings.
She picks up a pickaxe and gets to work.