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He thinks he’s alright, really. It’s not that things are wrong, because things shouldn’t be wrong. He got her back. She’s with him now. His shoulders might ache and maybe he should still be letting them heal, but he’s supposed to be alright, so here he stands. Cleaning tables in Hermes’s bar like he did before, Eurydice maneuvering around him with empty cups and plates. She brushes him with her arm as he goes past, and he looks up and smiles at her.
Okay? she mouths.
She shouldn’t worry about him. If either of them should be concerned, it’s Orpheus. Eurydice was the one who died once, who had to suffer through the process of reviving slowly but surely as they journeyed to the surface. But Eurydice is well-trained in survival, ironically enough, and Orpheus isn’t. She sniffs him out easily.
Fine, he mouths back.
He winces. Fine, but not good. He’s usually able to catch himself and fix that before it gets out, but he wasn’t thinking. Eurydice notices the difference too, subtle as it may be, and her eyes sharpen. She lowers one hand and taps twice with her index and middle fingers on his wrist. Home, the gesture suggests.
Which, that isn’t very far. Just behind the bar, up the stairs, one room at the end of the hall overlooking the station. They haven’t gotten the chance (or money) to move out yet. But it’s enough.
Orpheus shakes his head. Eurydice frowns and lets go of him.
He keeps cleaning the tables in silence.
Orpheus doesn’t make a sound while he works, which Eurydice has to admit chills her a little. He’s been off since the adrenaline from the walk faded—since that first morning, when the weight of, well, everything started to set in again and he remembered what he’d left behind to go find her. His world had been Eurydice before, and it had been her for the first night after they’d made it back up top, but then things changed.
She wouldn’t say that he’s losing interest in her. It isn’t that. He still looks at her as if she’s hung the moon and painted the stars. He finds her in the middle of their work, resting his head on her shoulder while she washes dishes and snagging her hand when she walks past, following on her heels when she goes somewhere as if he’s afraid to let her out of his sight for too long.
But something has shifted in him, and she can’t pinpoint what it is. Orpheus has never been good at keeping secrets, but there’s something bothering him now, something that makes his eyes go flat, something that makes his hands twitch, something that makes him veer away from the crate-loads of liquor when they come in, and subsequently from her when she asks him about it. He doesn’t even seem to notice that he does it.
The air in the bar feels wrong without him singing. Eurydice would do it for him, but she’s never been able to sing like he does, and she’s come to accept that only his voice would sound right in a space like this. He has a way of accounting for the space that makes even his humming fill every corner of the bar. Eurydice doesn’t know how he does it.
She wants to ask him again about why he’s acting like this, now that the bar has cleared out. It’s on the tip of her tongue. But it’s at that moment that Hermes steps through the back door and calls both of their names.
They turn together, and something in Hermes’s face softens.
“We have another load,” he tells them. Eurydice senses Orpheus go stiff behind her, and she doesn’t know if Hermes sees it. If he does, he doesn’t comment on it. “I know I’ve been taking care of them myself lately, but…this one’s a bigger one. I need more hands.”
Eurydice turns to catch Orpheus’s expression. His face is angled down, his hands raised, and his eyes are on her.
But one thing that hasn’t changed from then to now is Orpheus’s desire to help. So while he doesn’t go first, he still goes. He trails Eurydice to the back of the bar, where at least a dozen crates lie. They’re lidded and wrapped with rope. Hermes bends down and takes one—Eurydice doesn’t know if she should protest, since there’s white in his hair, or stay quiet, since he’s supposed to be an immortal god. Hermes hands the crate to Eurydice, puts one hand on her back to steady her when her knees wobble, and then reaches for another crate.
Orpheus is alright when Hermes turns to him. He’s alright when Hermes holds out the crate. He’s even alright when the wood brushes against him.
Then he touches the ropes, and the crate crashes to the ground, the bottles inside shattering.
There are featureless faces all around him. Well—not entirely featureless; they have eyes and mouths, but they can’t see, can’t speak. They look at him with anger, but a reserved kind of anger, like they aren’t really affected.
He thinks maybe they’ll let him go. Maybe they don’t care enough about him. It’s Hades who wants this. Surely they don’t.
Then one of them wrenches his hands behind his back, another steps forward and gives him a hard punch to the jaw, another knees him in the gut. His words of placation die on his lips. Any plan to get them to stop and see that his quarrel isn’t with them—isn’t with anyone, really—are forgotten. He doesn’t think anymore. He just struggles to get away.
He gets out of their grip for a moment. Long enough that he can run away and stop in his tracks when he comes up on another group of people. He stumbles away from them, but they corner him, hemming him in.
“Please,” he says, voice small.
They have something in their hands. He sees what it is and shakes his head, but when he tries to back up he knocks against leather and skin. They twist him around, and it doesn’t matter how much he bucks to get away again. They tie the rope around his wrists. Tight enough that he couldn’t move his hands if he tried, then tighter. It chafes against his skin. They lead him to the side, tie the other end of the rope to something he can’t see, and make sure he can’t get away.
He keeps twisting, trying to loosen the rope, but it does nothing except rub the skin of his wrists raw. He grits his teeth as he’s kicked over and over, sinking to his knees. His wrists bend unnaturally from the way they’re tied, and something snaps. He tries not to make a sound, but he’s never been good at keeping silent. He whimpers and curls into a ball as best he can with the rope pulling his arms back uncomfortably.
By the time they’re done, the rope has loosened enough that he can slip his hands free. He flinches as his fingers slide against the rope and lies on the cold stone floor, blood pooling beneath him.
Orpheus, a voice says, and he flinches, eyelids fluttering.
He’s supposed to be alone. He doesn’t know who he could be hearing, or why he’s hearing them. The voice sounds familiar, but it’s a little muffled, and his brain can’t place its owner.
Orpheus, the voice says again, joined by another.
They keep saying his name. His name and every nickname under the sun, getting faster and more panicked as he doesn’t respond. He feels someone lift his face, and as he opens his eyes, he’s overtaken by a wave of vertigo. He wants to vomit. Dizzily, he takes in his surroundings—not the factory floor, and there’s no blood underneath him, no blood on his face. He’s not lying down. He’s sitting on his knees. His arms are numb. There’s a man above him, bending down and staring at him with concern. And there’s a girl cradling Orpheus’s face in her hands, saying his name with open fear.
Eurydice.
Oh.
Orpheus feels himself falling, forehead dropping onto Eurydice’s shoulder. She yelps and adjusts her position, dropping fully onto her knees beside him and wrapping her arms around him to keep him from falling further.
“Eddie,” he says against her skin, hollow and too full at the same time. She stills, her breath hitching. He reaches up and takes hold of Eurydice’s arms.
You’re alright, he tells himself. Things aren’t wrong. Things shouldn’t be wrong. You’re alright.
But he can’t stop shaking. And Eurydice won’t let go of him, like she’s worried. And Hermes isn’t touching the crate that he dropped, like this matters that much.
He’s still shaking like a leaf in the wind, but his grip on Eurydice’s arms starts to loosen. He buries his face further in her shoulder, takes a watery breath, slides one hand down her arm, and taps twice with his index and middle fingers against her wrist.
Home.
Eurydice takes a breath of her own, and it feels like she hasn’t done that in a long time. She nods, even though Orpheus can’t see it. She glances up at Hermes, and she wants to apologize for the ruined crate, but he holds up a hand to stop her. Go, he mouths, pain in his eyes.
She looks back down at Orpheus. Is she shaking too? She can’t tell if it’s him or her anymore. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I’m getting up now, ‘Pheus. Can you stand?”
He nods silently. Eurydice realizes that it’s more of a lie than she thought when he stumbles into her, most of his weight against her. She nearly falls over before steadying herself and starting to walk.
We’re going to talk about this later, she wants to say. But the way Orpheus stares tiredly at the ground, his head still on her shoulder, keeps her from speaking. She makes the silent promise to herself, though. Evidently, there are things they need to talk about.