Chapter Text
She falls asleep without meaning to.
In the dreams: Chronos, triumphant. As always. Even in the underworld, when his defeat is never far from the corners of her mind: in her dreams, he sits at their golden table, and Hades is on his plate. She cries out — in the dream, though she remembers in actuality she did not — and the child is raised to his lips.
A hand on her shoulder shakes her; she startles. It is not Hades’ hand, she knows even before she opens her eyes: the arms are gentle, soft. Feminine.
The girl is staring down at her as she awakens. Rhea stares at her granddaughter for a good long moment, takes in her looks: her belly is flat, as well as her breasts, so it is unlikely that she hosts a babe of Hades within her, or has. Her dress is not the simple blue-blacks of her aboveground dresses, but an immaculate silk thing. It is stitched lovingly across the sides; a girdle with more jewels than even Hera can boast is slung across her thin hips, though she does not wear it in the way Hera would; it is merely a belt, nothing more.
“Persephone,” she breathes.
The girl smiles. “Grandmother. Or…is it mother?” She bites her lip. “I don’t know how to refer to…”
“Either is fine.”
They are both silent a long moment; the girl looks up toward her now, her face calm, still. She no longer waves back and forth, for she has found her place in the dirt. She is not, after all, that much of a girl, anymore.
“I am glad to see you,” Rhea says. “Are you…alright?”
“Yes.” She sits next to her grandmother in the bed, and she thinks, for the first time, how grown she looks: Persephone is not a little thing, no matter Demeter’s mewling. The girl’s legs are as long as her own, and if she does not have Demeter’s bountiful bosom, well, there are other marks of womanhood on her. She has a calm face, almost serene; she neither smiles nor frowns, her mouth a curiously blank space – but she suspects the girl has many thoughts that she has kept underground. Another sign, perhaps, that she was meant to be here, to belong her: the queen of the deepest and most pensive realm.
“I am surprised to see you alone. Is your husband hiding in the corner with his helmet?” She asks, teasing the girl gently. Persephone looks at her and giggles.
“No.” She smiles, a soft blush on her cheek.
“Do you wish he was?” She whispers softly and the girl gasps, looks at her with a wider smile.
“Sometimes,” she admits, shyly. The smile on her is a great and terrible thing for Demeter she thinks; her little maiden is all first-love blush in her thin cheeks. She has lost weight, Rhea thinks; perhaps Hades supplies of living food run low. Presumably, Hades’ word about her lack of binding holds true.
Rhea smiles, a genuine smile, at the maiden, come to see her at last. It is good to see her, though odd to think that for this young woman, the entire universe is coming unglued. The girl seems to show no sign of that stress; unlike Demeter and Hades both, she leans in lightly, resting her head on her grandmother’s shoulder for just a moment. Rhea controls her urge to flinch; she is not much used to such tenderness in her children. “You love him, then? My eldest boy?”
“Yes,” she says, energetic and sweet. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” She is looking out the window to her room now, across a courtyard; she wonders if Hades is on the other end of it, pacing among trees the girl has planted for shades that will never need a place to hide from the sun.
“Are you sure? He is older than you,” Rhea says, subtly testing the girl. She doesn’t seem bothered, simply remaining placid; she smiles softly, and that is her only reaction. “By quite a bit.”
“He cannot get younger, and I will get older.” Calm, unbothered, unfazed; her eyes are not focused on Rhea, but on another face, one absent. Woe to be Demeter, Rhea thinks; her daughter is lost.
“He is a bit…severe. Cold.”
“There is warmth to him, if you know where to look.” The girl looks at her grandmother with a pinched mouth, as if she has eaten sour fruits. The neutral mask slips, just a bit. “I know where to look.”
“Marrying him is to marry a realm. A lot of responsibility.” That, she thinks, the girl has perhaps not quite learned; the eternal realm is forever, and exhausting all the more for that. It is not like the world above, or at least it wasn’t, once.
“I have a role here,” she says, with surprising queenly grace. “I have…uses. Not just bringing flowers to bloom. People need me. He needs me. He was lost in his understanding of the people, he has to — he has to learn. I am teaching. He knows, too, what I need, what was missing in me. He fills me. We are – love. Yes. Love. Need,” the girl says, bringing her hands together. “Want.”
“What he needs and what you want may be separate things. You are young — do not feel the need to shackle yourself to him out of pity.”
“It is not pity.” Persephone shows her youth here; she is easier to rile than her husband. The corn-maiden purses her lips in what looks dangerously close to a pout. “He is…stillness? I don’t know how to say it. Completion. He is my…rock in the sun. Comforting. Unyielding. I don’t want to leave him.”
“Then I will tell your mother that.” The girl looks down, stares at her hands. Rhea knows her expression well: guilt. They are both silent a long time.
“I don’t want to hurt mama,” she says, finally, sounding younger than her years. “He has told me. What she’s doing. It’s my fault.”
Rhea sighs tries to throw her arm around the girl; the girl moves away, a subtle but definite rejection. In this, she sees a similarity with her boy. They are both all too happy to play martyrs. “Child, no one is responsible for actions beyond their own. What your mother does — it is out of concern for you, but it is not your sin.”
“She wouldn’t do it. If I hadn’t gone.” She bites her lip, the little thing, smooths her skirt of non-existent wrinkles. “If I’d told her. About him. But oh, she would never accept him. Never accepted that part of me. She only wanted a little girl, and I can’t…I can’t be just a little girl anymore.”
“I think your mother is well aware of that, now,” she says, meaning it as comfort. The girl’s face crumples.
“She won’t ever accept it, I don’t’ think, that I’m not just a baby. I love her and I love the flowers and I love mama’s cookies and mama’s hugs and mama’s barley-bed, but I want…I want him. His feather-bed and his beard on my shoulder. His realm full of shadow-stalks and shadow-people. His children, with storm-blue eyes and curly black hair. What will she think of my children…?” The little one curls her arms around herself, a behavior not unlike her husband’s. Perhaps it is the underworld itself that engenders them to be so mournful, so prone to beading at their own breasts and wailing. “Will she blame him for corrupting me?”
“No, little flower.” The nickname suits but is not quite right; Rhea has never been one for nicknames. The tenderness feels odd and, she suspects, is not entirely successful. “Your mother loves you. What she does, she does out of concern for your choices. I think…” Rhea sighs. She cannot promise the girl anything more than she promised the mother. “If you talked to her…”
“No no,” the girl says, shaking her head. “Mama doesn’t care about words. She will think that he’s…he’s made me say it. I know how she is. Mama is – mama. She won’t trust. Not now.”
“She will trust you.” She tries to soothe the girl, offers her a hand that is ignored. Persephone ignores her attempt, instead stares out the window, looking into the courtyard below. Rhea does not follow her; she has learned long ago that good things have rarely come from such pondering. “You are the most precious thing in the world to her,” she says, knowing it is true. She envies it, somewhat; she has never had the luxury of knowing such a feeling with her own children.
“Do you ever feel – so pulled in two, grandmother?” She sounds pensive, scared. There is a vulnerability to her now, and Rhea can almost trace the line of it, curving with her back bent, her fingers whirling strange lines in the dust of the window. “I should not wish to disappoint my mother, but I cannot bear the thought of him being alone. He has been alone so long. He will not bear it well, to be alone again. But mama…I don’t think mama should be alone, either.”
“Life is full of difficult choices, little one.” She stands then, feels every ancient bone crack into place. “Life is full of choices we don’t want to make, but must. It is part of a queen’s duty – and a goddess’s duty – and now you are both. You must choose your sorrows: which you bear, and which heart you break.” She has chosen her own all too often: her husband over five children. One child over her husband. Her children over her husband again. Her son over her daughter. Life is full of such decisions, and regrets. The girl will have to learn of it.
“You have not answered,” the Queen of the underworld says, sharp as a tack. “My question, I mean. Have you felt it? That split?”
“Yes.” It is a woman’s fate, she thinks: always caught between what came before, and what will come after. Despite her better judgment, she looks out into the courtyard; Hades is there, looking lost. He has a bowl of something in his hands – she is not sure what. His hand does not dip into it; his face does not look at it. His ghosts do not approach him; without the new mistress of the grounds, perhaps, the magic is gone, and they fear the old king as much as they ever did. “There is a part of me here, always,” Rhea says, and is surprised at her own anger in her voice. She points upwards, furious at a fault that is no one’s but a man she cannot bring herself, entirely, to blame. “And a part of me there. And nothing will ever bridge that divide, granddaughter. You will always be split. And all will know it and mark it. A shift in allegiance is always notable, and never forgotten.” And they will view you with suspicion forevermore, she thinks, but does not say. The young one will find that out all too readily.
“How do you manage it?” Persephone asks, her voice shaking just slightly. She looks at her grandchild; she looks young, but regal. Her chin is held high and does not wobble. Only the slight tremble to her bright voice has any hint of her distress. She is trying to slip the mask back into place, but she has not been through the crucible that perfects such veils. Not just yet. Still, it is a promising start for a queen.
“You must find your own way.” Her voice must be pitiless; it is flat, and the girl grimaces— she looks away so that Rhea does not see it, but she sees it. Rhea has long been used to looking for ways to read her strange children, her stranger husband. “It is crucial to survival, my child. You find a way or-–”
“Perish.” Persephone says this without a single wobble to her tone. Rhea watches her, gazing at her husband, who seems unaware of his wife’s affectionate glance. She thinks that is love between them, and it is all the more pitiable for it. The wife holds out a hand, presses it against the new window; the husband takes no notice. Her son, as always, is a gloomy fellow.
“Yes.” Rhea sighs. “I wish you did not have to make this choice, Persephone. I know, better than most, how you feel.”
Persephone looks at her with winnowed eyes but says nothing. The look speaks enough, says how could you possibly know in the manner in which all youths turn their skeptical eyes towards their ancestors.
“You may have the eternal throne,” she says. “And with it, my son.” Rhea drums her fingers. “But your father will not allow your mother to continue her bleating – not for long. And if you do not go to her, then he will …remove her from the situation.”
“She’d be here,” the Queen of the Underworld whispers. She sees the calculations she has done all too often beginning to form in Persephone’s mind: is it better to let it happen this way? To let her mother fall, for her own means? It is a temptation to those of their blood: her husband, once, did this same calculus, and came to apply it to both his children and his parents both. Blood and its spilling is all too familiar to their kind, and all too excusable in pursuit of what one can think of as a noble goal.
“Yes. If you are very lucky, your father will only insist on her being in Tartarus. Chained up with your grandfather.” She debates not telling the girl the rest, but that, she thinks, is not a kindness. She was kind with Zeus, and look where that has gotten them: to a king who did not quite weigh Demeter’s wishes with the gravity he should have. “More likely he will kill her, and her ghost will haunt you.”
The girl says nothing; does not so much as nod. She is very still, her face paused – considering.
“Choose your mother, and she lives. But – your father will not allow you to remain married to him, no. It will undoubtedly be part of your mother’s demands before she restores fertility to the earth.”
“I’ll never see him again, then.” She stiffens.
“You could, perhaps, arrange a moonlit meeting—”
“No.” She looks at her strange little boy, looking oddly as old as he does despite how much younger she is than him. “His rules would never allow that. He is – how do you say? Stern.”
“His rules may well become stifling if you stay.” She tries to brush a hand down the girl’s cornsilk hair, so much like her mothers, but the image shatters; Persephone moves aside, raises a hand. I am not your child, this strange young queen says without words. Do not touch me.
“Don’t,” she says, simply. “Please.”
She nods, watches Persephone as she holds her fate in her hands. Persephone rubs her palms together, a nervous habit – one of her father’s, and her father’s father before her, though she cannot know that.
“Do you know which you will choose?” She asks, soft. She needs to know that much; knowing which way the girl leans will make it so much easier to make her argument. The man they both watch stands, still without a clue of them looking in his direction. Morosely, he takes his basket into the homestead. He has not drawn a single thing from it, nor gathered a single thing in it. A strange boy, her boy; a strange, strange child.
“It is time for dinner, I think,” the girl says.
“It is not an answer,” Rhea replies, frowning. The girl is cagier than she thought; she just smiles in response. Rhea does not return it. “I would have your answer before we go.”
“I will find my own way to survive, grandmother.” She offers a hand; a perfect little hand, tawny still even in this darkness. “Please.”
She sighs. The child is, as all children are, stubborn. “I fear you do not have much time.” She places both her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Persephone, you are playing the game of kings and queens. The penalty for losing is beyond your comprehension. Do not think just because you are young, you can escape without consequences—”
“You promoted me to my position in this game!” The girl shouts. And then she turns.
And then she flees.
Rhea catches her running, black silk scurrying downstairs. She will go to her husband, Rhea knows; they will present a united front, all her attempts at getting under Hades’ skin for naught. A wife has greater influence than a mother, a mother more influence than a grandmother. She has pressed the girl too far, and now they will all die for it.
She sighs.
She is making a pig’s ear out of a silk purse. She cannot get through to any of them.
It is well and good she is no longer Queen of the Gods for such delicacies of politics are clearly well beyond her.
Rhea! Her madman calls. Rhea!
She does not answer. What answer is there to give? She sits back down on her bed, curls her old legs to her arms, a child’s pose. Rhea, the madman pleads; her stomach turns. It does not end. Time is split, eternally, for her; she made her choice.
She has suffered ever since.
Rhea! He pleads, as he has before.
But she does not answer, and she closes her eyes, and allows herself, for just a moment, to pause, to gather herself. Rhea makes herself into a seed, imagines herself as she is, buried deep down into the earth. She tries to imagine pushing forward, to bring new life to the up top. Holds out her hands.
But the magic doesn’t come. Her powers don’t summon anything; even an attempt to copy the flower the girl has left her renders nothing into being.
She is just an old woman. And she is alone. And there are no answers here without losses; does she take the girl, and run up to the heavens, fast as her aging bones can carry her? No. She will never get out of here alive. Even if she did, what use is a child who will constantly demand to be let down into the dirt, into the final kingdom? The underworld may not have chosen her, but she has chosen it. One way or another, she will find her way back.
Rhea, her madman cries out. Rhea, rhea. So many complex emotions in so few words. She knows from Hades’ blast of mental communication that the man can still speak; he does not do so with her. For what can you say, she supposes, when you have committed the ultimate sin? She, too, can tell him nothing for what can she say to justify her own betrayal to his cause? They are both traitors, in their own ways.
And love no less because of it, damn them all!
Rhea takes her time and, despite knowing the girl meant to call her for dinner, she waits a long period before answering the call. She needs the time to knit herself whole; she is old, and she is so, so tired. The underworld presses like briars into her skin.
Or, perhaps, a sword into her back.
She ignores it, as best she can. Straightens up with a mirror her strange boy has provided, makes sure there is not a wrinkle in her clothing, not one stitch out of place. Loosens her hair, then redoes it. Practices making her face plain until it is as iron a mask as one she might have worn into war once. She was queen of the heavens and its that mask she slips back upon her brow; she tells herself that this fragment of her history matters, even if she feels weak, and old, and lonely.
And she is all too well aware that this has taken some time, and yet: the little flower does not fly to her hand. She has found new ground, and no longer has need to ask tasks of her grandmother anymore. Her strange shadow-son does not deign to get her, either; perhaps with the bride she has given to him, he views her own needs as suddenly, wretchedly, immaterial.
Hades, she thinks, was right. No matter how she wishes to claim some sort of ancestral ownership here, to evoke kinship with him – the Underworld is a horrible place. She cannot fathom choosing to stay here. Even her madman cannot keep her here. Zeus at least lied to her, tells her that she is important on Olympus even though she serves no higher office; it was a kind lie.
And now it is scraped away. The truth: she is little better than a bit of a thread.
She will just have to hope she can sew some kind of future at this dinner. She does not know what, and that in itself scares her, that Rhea, a queen who has lived so long, may not know in any way how to shape the future. She thought she knew what she was doing when she bid the girl to find the underworld itself, that she was making a necessary sacrifice, an important sacrifice.
Now she is aware that this is just another in a very long line of mistakes. She breathes in a deep breath, makes her face as placid as she can in the mirror.
And with as much regal grace as she can muster – which is, truthfully, not much – Rhea, former Queen of the Heavens, former Queen of the earth, walks the strange and serpentine hallways her eldest has created. And then, of course, down the hall, and to his dining room. It is odd to come without his hand gently held in her own; odder still to hear voices in the room before she enters.
“Should I get her?” That is Hades, there: her boy, surprisingly subservient to his little bride. She is surprised he would offer her so much as this: he has never second-guessed his decisions around Rhea. But there is doubt in his voice that she hears, and displeasure, too. Rhea is a nagging thread, and Hades does nothing but pull loose threads from the world above. Such is his nature.
“She’ll come, in her time, I think,” Persephone says; her voice a little hot. Still uncertain in her role; Rhea would never use I think as the end of the sentence. Queens cannot show such doubt in public.
But, Rhea thinks, softening: she is young. And she is very young to be a queen.
“We’ll wait a bit longer, then.” She hesitates at the doorway, some sudden shyness coming over her from being the topic of conversation. She hears the drag of one of Hades’ ebony chairs as it scoots – presumably, closer to his bride.
“Are you alright?” This Hades is so much his own man now; the voice quiet and sweet. She wonders where he gets this; it was certainly not from her. “Has she—”
“I’m fine,” she says, and oh, she sees here where these two are well met: steel approaching steel. She takes a step closer.
Rhea gathers her courage and pulls up her skirts, scooting into the room with the class of a queen that she more than certainly does not feel herself to be. There is certainly no power here for her to savor; she is well aware it is her, here, who is in the most tremulous of positions.
"Ah," Hades says, soft. He pushes out his chair, stands to attention. The room has changed somewhat; the large table remains, but Hades has decorated it with elaborate golden chains that wind down the whole of the table. Decorations are evidently one of the things his new wife has given him a taste for, but it looks like nothing so much as a chain for her neck, wound down the table. A golden cornucopia stands at the center, lopped by two neat garlands of metallic gold. In it, pomegranates, which she knows is obviously a mark of the newlywed's bliss. She strides to her son's side, takes his arm, and does not give any indication of how the decor bothers her.
Persephone looks coolly at her; not quite upset, but certainly not very trusting. "Welcome, mother," she says, and Rhea thinks that choosing to signify Rhea by her relationship to Hades indicates a great deal about the girl. Like her mother before her, the girl has rejected her; she isn't as fiery as Demeter, but then, she has Zeus' cold lightning burning through her veins as well.
"Thank you, daughter," she says, keeping up the pretense. She looks at the girl's plate as Hades guides her to the third seat; they have already been served. Persephone eats, to her relief, a small serving of ambrosia; nothing that binds her here. Hades has his usual roots. It is a relief to know that some things about her strange boy have not changed.
"Did you have a good rest?" Hades asks, keeping with the formalities. She supposes that he has tired of the moralities and she cannot blame him. They have argued overlong.
"It was alright," she says, smiles thinly. "And meeting with my granddaughter, of course, a joy. Thank you for allowing me your time, fair queen." She hasn't forgotten the better part of tact just yet.
Persephone's cheeks color; she is, Rhea thinks, a bit embarrassed. "Thank you for the kind words," she says, delicately. She does not say: Thank you for spending time with me. She does not say thank you for coming for me. These, Rhea thinks, are not good signs. She wonders if Zeus knows how poorly her attempt is going; perhaps her youngest boy does not care, perhaps he is boasting that he has gotten rid of two pains in the ass in one large sweep of his palm.
She has the small comfort of knowing that with Hades holding the flower tight in his fist, and the mother unlikely to yield, that Zeus awful jokes will find few to no sympathetic ears. If she fails utterly at this, her eldest will follow her down soon, and they will have eternity to hash out her failures.
The concept bothers her more than she wants to admit.
One of Hades shadowy servants saves her from making small-talk. "Ambrosia, if you'd please," she says, raising her plate. "And wine." Copious amounts, preferably, but the damnable shade only fills the glass halfway.
She moves the wine to her lips anyway. She needs it.
"Did you have a good day, wife?" Hades is doing this for her show, she knows; still she watches carefully, sees how his hands reach out to grasp her own. They do not look so ill-matched, though he is so many years her senior. "Enjoying your garden?"
"Always, my rock," she says. It is an odd nickname but given how strange Hades is, it somewhat suits him. He smiles thinly toward her, as if to gesture: see mother, she so enjoys it here.
"And did you have a good day on your work?" She asks, and the sickly sweetness of her voice tells Rhea that they have rehearsed this. "Was it rewarding?"
"I have always said it is important work," he says; Rhea raises her brows.
"You are not wrong," Rhea says. "It is important and thoughtful work, my son. Seen by a generally thoughtful and important man." But in this instance, my son, you have more love than sense. As strange as it is to think of her shadow son now so madly in love, it has happened, most obviously, and it has made him blind to the most obvious calculation in the world.
"Sometimes, she helps me with the judgments," he says; he says this fast, obviously pleased. "It will not be long before she will be handing down her own justice, mother."
"Have you made your decision then?" She asks. It's a heavy thing, and neither of them answers, but the look that they give one another is telling: a darted glance, the sort of communication only shared between two lovers. They wish to remain together; that much is so. His hand reaches for her pinky; she intertwines her thin finger with his.
"You are being selfish," she says, soft. "You would doom your own mother for the sake of your husband? Doom perhaps all of us?"
"No," Persephone says, her voice scratchy. "I don't want to hurt mama but — I can't go up there. I can't. I'd rather be dead."
Here, Rhea thinks, that is not an idle threat. No god has died since the Titanomachy, but that does not mean it is not possible for one to die again.
And the girl, like all three of them, knows damnably well that death and capture is not the end of the line. Not for their kind.
"None of those hysterics, child," she says. She tries to make the rebuke gentle but Persephone wrinkles her nose, and she can see the girl's thoughts plain on her pretty, young face. What does this old woman know? How could she know what it feels like, to be split from one's love? That ancient crone. She doesn't know anything, can't understand. It is as plain on her face as her cornflower eyes, her ever-tawny skin.
Rhea thinks it is the pity of youth: They are always condemned to repeat their father's mistakes. Her father went mad, kept all their children smothered, and so did Chronos, wise king until his rule was threatened. She wonders how many years of happiness, perhaps, these two have: it concerts her that Hades has not spoken of her poisonous hypothetical. Such things would not stop them from being together, she thinks. Has he whispered the thought of it, the possibility of binding herself to the ground? He has done it. She remembers that much, though only long after he had done so. Did he suffer? She does not know. Did it change him? That, too, is beyond Rhea’s reckoning. So much she has seen and so little she knows.
Persephone smiles, and it is not entirely kind. No, it is just as likely that the girl has come up with the idea of binding herself to the ground herself. Rhea has misjudged her badly. She is of far keener mind than Rhea had thought.
"It is not hysterics," Persephone says hotly. "It is my life! I should be allowed to choose how to spend it!"
"You are a princess in a world of kings." She brings back their conversation in the hall; Hades stabs at the roots on his plate, the noise an ominous foreboding. He has always bound himself, and she has never understood why. She suspected, perhaps that he held a not-unjust fear of his brother recalling him, wanted to give himself a reason why this particular brother must always remain moldered in the grave below. A political play, nothing more.
Now she wonders if perhaps he has come, in desperation, to the idea of making the girl make the same sort of move.
"Son," she says, carefully; Hades looks at her, then at his precious flower-wife. "Why don't you come back with me tomorrow? We can leave your bride to mind things. As you said, she is ready."
He gives her a shy, hesitant smile. "I do not trust that your other son would allow us to return, mother." He waves a hand. "He has already changed his mind as to this marriage. Why would he not change his mind over letting me have the underworld?"
She presses her lips together; it is a good point. "Do you think I would let that happen, my boy?"
He sighs and leans forward; his hand taps against the table. "Mother..."
"Answer."
"Perhaps," he says, tartly. "Though I think you are more likely only to allow such indirectly. I do not think you likely to put forth such a suggestion. But if my five siblings demand it, I do not think you will mind."
"The needs of the many," the girl says softly. "Always outweigh the needs of the few. That's why you rebelled against the madman, isn't it?"
Rhea puts down her glass; nectar-wine sloshes onto the table, angry red dots trailing in its wake.
"I did what had to be done," she says. "You of all people cannot dare to tell me it was wrong." Her nostrils flare. "You are the few here; the world above dies for your love. Selfish. Thousands freeze, and millions starve. Is your love worth that? I think it not. I wish things were different. I will tell them, if you wish ,that this is how you choose to play it, that this is the sword upon which you choose to die." Neither of the couple has moved in a long time. "But I will be sorry of it, and I should not - should not like to do so."
"This is a problem without resolution." Hades rubs his forehead slowly, as if they have given him a headache. Sighs. Does nothing for a long moment, then moves his free hand to play with his wine glass. Both of them watch him, these two women so far apart in generations: Hades tips his glass back and finishes his drink in one go. "I do not wish the world to end, but..."
But, but but. But for want of a girl.
"I wish things were different, my son," she says. He does not look convinced. Persephone is her husband’s mirror: she, too, does not look convinced. She stabs at her supper, a loud stab through her ambrosia: Rhea cannot shake the idea that Persephone perhaps wishes it were her mother in law's head upon the plate. Still despite the disagreement, they take the meal together, reaffirming their xenia; the girl eats her ambrosia, and Rhea eats hers. Each bite tastes nothing like the heaven it should: in contemplating the future, all is ash.
Hades, of course, is first to finish, his roots both less dense and his mouth more silent. He does not often look up; keeps himself set upon his meal.
The girl, on the other hand: her gaze darts about. She pauses between bites, looks at the hall like she worries she will not ever see it again.
And perhaps, that is true. Her eyes dart longingly to the pomegranates in the cornucopia; they are narrowed. She does not blame the girl; it is poorly chosen symbols. The cornucopia, a sign of plenty; the pomegranate, a sign of eternal marriage.
And yet for her, Rhea knows, neither will be true. She will never have enough. She will always have to choose: her husband or her mother; her life above or her life below. She tries to give the girl an understanding look, but she does not meet her grandmother's eyes.
And so silence leads over the stone halls of the third estate.
"I will have to know," she says, soft and kind. "By tomorrow." Zeus will not give her much longer than that, and the journey to Olympus will be long. She doubts Hades will row out his chariot.
"You know now," Persephone says; Hades raises his hand, and the girl bristles. Has he changed his mind? Has she broken through to him after all? Rhea bites back a smile despite the circumstances; some newlywed tussles are always the same, despite this couple's unusual stakes. It was the same with her and Chronos and Gaea, but then, she had never quite learned to play the patient wife.
And Chronos, undoubtedly, had paid for it.
Rhea, he whispers in her mind, contemptuously; she blots it out. She can only afford so much heartbreak, right now.
"We will talk," Hades says, soft. His wife looks away; clearly, she believes they have talked enough.
But for Hades, she suspects, his decision to keep her does not sit well with him. He wants the girl, oh yes, that is never in doubt - but he knows all too well from their conversation that he is lying to himself. He needs a legal justification, and he will hash it out until the girl's face is as blue as the skies above, until he can find some desperate rule he can claim her.
And there is only one, Rhea knows, that can do that.
That, she thinks, is a possibility. Also possible: that this is all a ruse, that he is but waiting for her to call out her hand, to eat one of the products of the underworld she has so lovingly created. She hopes, for his sake and her own, that is the former that is his motivation, and not the latter.
She is saved from any further rumination by a knock on the door: it is heavy and ominous, a loud knock-knock-knock that is all too urgent. Everyone at that table freezes for a long moment, but the knocking does not cease. It may as well be a clock, for it is surely a sign that they are all out of time now.
"I will see to our intruder," he says. "Excuse me."
Persephone watches her husband as he leaves, then her gaze darts to Rhea. The forlorn look on her face suggests what Rhea knows to be true: they are out of time, they have long been out of time, there is no escape now. Persephone will have to make her decision or be dragged kicking and screaming out of hell.
Rhea tries to make her face look sympathetic, but what can she say? She has warned them. They have known this coming; probably knew even without her.
Persephone makes a horrible noise; the sort of wail that only a woman with a truly broken heart would make.
"You do not need to make such noises," Rhea says; she holds out her hand toward the girl, who does not take it. "It doesn't suit a queen." Persephone’s eyes harden and she nods; once, twice. Then she stands.
"If you go towards them, you're only bringing it upon yourself faster." She knows it must be Zeus, or if he cannot bear to go himself, Hermes, or the girl's mother, finally slipped the veil into the great beyond and coming now as promised to find her daughter. Demeter's spirit is single-minded enough to burst into the palace long before she even realized she was dead.
Persephone does not answer her; she stalks down the table. Her stride is not that of a child but of a predator, mercilessly running down the antelope.
Rhea cannot shake the feeling that she is the antelope and freezes when she glances at the girl’s predacious fury. Is this it? Is this where her fate, at long last, lies? To be rendered into obsolescence by her own granddaughter? She does not move, cannot move.
But the girl moves past her, stalks down the table until she reaches the cornucopia.
And in that, Rhea sees her plan, but the knowledge comes too late.
"Girl!" She rebukes, her words full of scorn as the girl breaks open one of the pomegranates. One of the girl’s first creations here, she will find out later; a gift for her husband upon their marriage. She wonders: was it merely accident, an intended demonstration of marital harmony, but nothing more, to place such a symbolic fruit on this table, at this time? She is not sure. She suspects in these few precious seconds that she will never be sure, that she will always wonder about if fate could be different if not for this one moment.
Such regrets are nothing new. This time, though, instead of watching her husband stretch his jaws inhumanely wide, she gets up, pulls up her skirts, runs for the girl — and reaches her seconds too late.
It seems to happen in slow motion: the girl pulls off the arils, juice running down her fingers like blood. She pulls out just a handful, but enough, enough. She raises them to her mouth, puts them inside. Rhea sucks in a hot breath as she reaches her, shakes the girl. "Stop!" She says. "Stop this now!"
The rebuke falls on the girl like rain; she blinks, but she continues to chew. "Stop it!" Rhea cries again, to no more effect than the last time. "Foolish, foolish girl!"
She did not do this for her son, who doomed himself to do the dirt without her intercession. But her son had done so before she had ever graced his door, the war barely over, barely won; she was saved the deliberation over whether she would guide her hand to stop him from such.
But the girl — this is irrevocable. Every god above will weep. Rhea tries to open Persephone mouth — manages it, though the girl tries to bite down on her like a tiger. But Rhea is not without some strength in her old age, and manages to evade the girl and keep her grasp. Barely, but she hooks a finger in, pulls one of the seeds out; another. Manages to get a third, but no more.
She has devoured at least three more, if not more than that. Rhea tries to think back to her memory of the girl putting such into her mouth — she does not recall the number. "Foolish girl!" She cries out again. "Stupid girl!"
Persephone swallows, and it is as if she can no longer hear her. She smiles at Rhea, her smile tinged with red juice that drips like blood down those too-white teeth.
"What's going on?" Hades says, distantly; she doesn't look up at him, his deep voice only adding reverb to her panic.
"I did it," the girl says. Her voice is quiet, but triumphant.
And then she goes down. The chthonic roots drift into her system, winding down into her. If she concentrates, Rhea can see them there, black-roots spiraling through her veins, her blood.
"What did you do?" Her son says; he grabs her arms and he shakes his mother. Shakes Rhea like she is a ragdoll, and in that moment, Rhea fears that he will take her life, take her life and everything of it, all for want of the scrap of this girl. "What did you do?!" He demands again, more forcefully: sounding so much like her husband, that for a moment Rhea falls confused.
"What was right," she says to Chronos. She turns her head, blinks. No, that is not it. This is not her madman. This is Hades, and he is still shaking her; she pulls her arms aside, breaks his hold. "Hades," she breathes, softly. "Sorry. I - I did nothing. I tried. I tried to stop — I was too late, I..."
He drops her, goes to the girl. Cradles her head and whines, whines like she has never known a man to whine. For the first time, she looks away to see who has come to ruin the so-called domestic bliss of their union. It is Hermes; of course, her Zeus would not be so brave as to come to admit his failures in person. For the first time, she loses her respect for her golden son. Hermes looks terrified and confused; she cannot spare an arm to comfort him, for her shadow son has not ceased his whining.
"I did not wish you to suffer this," he mutters. It is the first she has ever heard of him regretting his actions. She wonders if he overestimated his own suffering when he doomed himself; wonders if he sorrows, truly, for what the girl has done, or only for what she is going through.
"I got a few out," she offers; she looks down at the arils that lay at their feet, bloody little bits that look wholly unimpressive. "Come, we will take her to - to her chambers." She looks toward Hermes. "Come, grandson, help us to move her."
Hermes still hasn't recovered; he grips his caduceus, his mouth a seemingly permanent oh. he is a young thing and does not know of any of the secrets of the dark, of the deep. Still, he mobilizes quickly enough, if not quite in the right direction. "I bring word from lord Zeus, my father— "
"I don't care," Hades says; he has dragged the girl up to her arms. She is a full-grown woman, but far shorter than him, and it looks almost comical as he tries to bring her up, a ragdoll without strings. Rhea takes her feet, not willing to let the girl be dragged like a poppet. "You can tell me your message later."
Hermes looks stricken by the thought. "Help us, boy," she grunts. Keeping Hermes will make Zeus only more fearful that Hades intends to keep whatever drifts into his domain, but for the moment they need someone to open the door, and for the moment everyone else's limbs are occupied. Hades, as well, is clearly in no state to be able to listen to the message, for his thoughts are wholly occupied on his bride.
Hermes doesn't argue again. He takes up the end of their awkward parade, as she and Hades carry the girl back up the stairs. Hades puts her back in the royal bedchamber; Rhea looks around. It is the first time she's been here, and she imagines this room certainly bears the mark of its newest inhabitant: there are flowers over most of the surfaces. Even Hades' bedsheets have been stitched with flowers, by a hand that she has to suspect is the girl's own, given the sligh imperfections to the embroidery. Hades covers the girl and perches over her, grief on his face.
"Why are you so worried?" Rhea asks; it is not as if he has not done this to himself, so many years ago.
"It hurts," he says quickly. “It is – very painful, the first time. I had underestimated…” His hand touches her face, and he does not need to tell her that the girl is burning up. "How much did she— ?"
"I don't know." She folds her hands mutely in her lap, sits upon a seat that has long been left empty.
He chuffs. "Try." He presses a kiss to the little flower's head; she does not stir. Her hair remains curled around her, pale blond over dark skin. "Darling?" He asks. She does not answer.
"It happened so fast..." Rhea shakes her head. "It matters little. We can only sit it out now."
Hermes looks between them; he is so clearly ill at ease. He does not like to be here; not in the lord of the underworld's apartments, not in the lord of the underworld's realm. "May I relay my message now, while we are waiting?" He wants, so badly, to go home to his father. He wants, so badly, for this to be resolved.
Poor Hermes. Still too young to realize most conflicts between their kind end messily.
"I don't care about your father, or his message," Hades growls. His thoughts are single minded; he continues to paw at the girl, who does not respond.
"Speak, child," Rhea says; Hades shoots her a rather furious look that reminds her of Chronos' own ire. My own wife stands against me! echoes in her mind; she does not know if it is him or only the memory of him. "You may as well hear it. The sooner you do so, the more time you have to prepare a response, with the girl so..." She points toward the girl, sitting down. "You know as well as I do, that this will take time."
Of course, her knowledge is second-hand. Hades hadn't come for her when he'd first eaten the fruits of the underworld; he had banished himself to his own underworld, first, and he’d renewed the vow at every mealtime. She's never quite figured out why he chose to bond himself to his realm and has so often thought upon it: to avoid temptation? To prevent himself from coveting other realms, from declaring war with his father's madness in his ear? She thinks that probable. Knowing what little she does know of the shadow boy, she could see, too, the idea that perhaps the boy wanted to punish himself — from some arcane law he convinced himself was broken. Hades does not punish mortals for any sins which he would not punish himself for.
But such matters little now.
"She will live for sure?" He says; the waiver tells her that her shadow boy is in fear, and she moves across the room to comfort him, in as much as she can. She brings her chair next to his own, scrapes it upon the floor.
"You know she will. You did." He nods once, twice. "All gods called as you and she have been can live through the second quickening."
But she leaves unsaid what is obvious: there is no going back, now, to Demeter. Already she can see the chthonic roots running through the girl's system, and she knows, too, that what the girl is going through is not anything that can be so easily reversed.
Hermes looks at her, at Hades. Rocks back and forth on his heels. "Erm — may I...?"
"Oh for the love of it all!" Hades snaps. The truth is, what the boy says will almost certainly be a moot point. "Are you that concerned about being back on Olympus? The girl is— " his voice cracks. "Changing..."
"I must do my duty," Hermes says, squirming. He is not one who enjoys such conflict; one of her son's sons who has been born into a bright springtime, one without war, without famine. What a strange world this must seem to him now, and not the way that things, simply, are.
"Then do it," Hades says, with a sigh. "What is it my brother wishes to tell me now? Is it not enough that he has already sent my own mother to henpeck me?!"
"Hades," she scolds, feeling, perhaps for the first time, like a proper mother to him.
"My lord Zeus demands that you release the girl," Hermes says; these words are more careful, rehearsed. Hades' hand balls into a fist, but he says nothing. Even Rhea dares not say anything. Zeus is playing a most dangerous game. At first he at least kept to the appearance of brotherly love, to barter delicately — but if Rhea was a knife, then Hermes is a dagger. It is craven of her son above to demand he give back what he already gave away, but perhaps the girl's mother has forced his hand.
If so, Demeter is better at politics than her mother suspected. Perhaps she has something of her father, after-all, beyond his bitterness.
"You surely know by now that that is impossible," Hades says; his hand drifts to the girl's hair. "What has been done cannot be undone. It merely is."
"What?" Hermes does not know. Perhaps cannot understand. He is a child born into a world where the realms have long been divided, after too much power proved the undoing of one, great man.
Rhea, Rhea! That man cries plaintively; she tunes him out. She cannot listen, not now. Soon, she thinks, but she does not know if this thought grants him any succor.
"Sir, are you refusing?"
"The girl has bound herself to the earth. She has become of the earth." Hades says this like it is an elegy, and Rhea finds it strange. He has, after all, won what he desired to keep. She cannot return to Demeter now, and without having so much as heard Hermes' demand, Hades cannot be held liable for the girl's decision. It will hurt Demeter, Rhea knows, to discover this, to discover, more troubling still, that the girl ate the fruit of the underworld all on her own.
"She may not be able to go up again," Rhea says, softly, filling in the gap's in her son's explanation. "The roots will bind her body to the underworld."
"She's dead?" Hermes looks at the apparent "corpse" with a newfound horror, as if the new pallor to the girl's skin will leach into his cheeks. She will be tawny enough when the process is complete.
"No." Rhea sighs. Hades has checked out of the situation, holding the girl's hand, and simply staring at her as if being king is reason enough for her to sit up in bed and talk to him once more. It is love, she thinks, between them, and so much the sadder for it. "But it may be some time before she wakes up. There is no telling."
"At least a week," Hades says, sour-voiced, as if his throat is coated in weeds and brambles. She knows he is talking from personal experience. She wonders who cared for him then; Charon, perhaps. Perhaps Nyx herself. Certainly not Rhea, who was already well-installed on Olympus, the last titan allowed to walk the earth. It does not matter; such things were long ago. She cannot take them back, become a more nurturing mother, any more than her son can reverse his wife's careless, but permanent choice to let the seeds drip down her throat. "Perhaps more," he adds, giving himself breathing room, which is smart enough when Zeus is involved.
And she knows Zeus will not hold patience, not for long.
"A suggestion, my son," she says, softly; Hades turns toward her, eyebrows wearily raised. He does not have the energy to deal with her, that look suggests, but her idea may grant him some succor, if he is not too pig-iron in his thinking to take advantage of it. "Why not let me and Hermes report to the world above?" She gestures to the boy, who nods voraciously, so openly eager to escape hell. "We will bargain with Zeus and Demeter on your behalf, the girl's— "
"No." Immediate. Ah. The look he gives her is hard and pitiless. "I'd sooner entrust a snake. You have always preferred him — you will not hesitate to throw me asunder in the deal now." He pulls back his arms from the girl, as if he cannot touch her while thinking of anything else. He stares at her longingly for a moment, and then he sits up straight, a king at attention. "If Zeus wants to bargain, tell him he may home here. Demeter as well if she wills it. I swear upon the Styx that I will guarantee their journey here and back and will not harm them within my realm during the negotiations, nor as they come and go."
Rhea notes, too, that this is carefully said: he has not promised that he will give them anything else. He has not promised he will not hurt them should the negotiations fail. But he is in a position of strength now, even feeling as miserable as he does, and he is king enough to know it. He glares at Hermes, nods tersely. "That is the only accommodation I am offering. Run home now, and tell him. We will await his...submission."
Hermes nods, his own face drained of color. He does not wish to be here, she knows, but he does not wish to go back to Olympus either, not with the news her son is bringing him. She knows she ought to bring up her own protestations - but she does not. Hades has his right to assert his claim, and she does not blame him for wishing not to leave his bride’s side. Persephone makes an odd noise on the bed, a sort of deep groan, and Hades' gaze turns softer, but only to the girl. Hermes watches, seemingly shocked by the transformation; Hades looks at him, this time with only sternness on his face.
"Go, boy," he says, and Hermes does; he jets down the steps, and Rhea can hear him run down the strange, white stone: click-click-click-click. He is skipping steps.
She says nothing, knowing Hades is in a fright. His head turns to her, his mouth pressed. He says nothing. She taps his shoulder, and he nods. Wordlessly, they watch over the girl as she moans, strange fruit bursting through her iron-hot veins.
There is power, Rhea reflects, in silence; Hades leans over to the girl, and he does not order her to get out, nor does he order her to stay. It is not quite a touching mother and son moment, but it is enough, she thinks, to try to offer a bit of comfort. "Love," she says softly. "Is not always so happy a thing."
She is thinking more of her own life— of her sons, her daughters, her madman— but he gives her a stern look. He does not speak. He strokes her hair, and after a few long moments, whispers something soft in his ear. She pats his shoulder again, unsure what else to do. It's an odd thing, to touch her shadow-boy; even his muscle feels as his father's once should have, a bright, comforting bulk.
Time passes. The girl cries out a few times in her sleep, low moans that suggest whatever she has found in the deep, it may not be a friend. Hades never wavers in her attention; when she briefly flickers with a flame of fever, Hades wordlessly wets a bit of cloth with water from an amphora, He is nothing less than devoted. He is nothing less than dutiful. And she would suspect no less. This behavior is what she knows of him, but this, this old behavior seems new in the context of caring not for a law, but for his own wife. She does not understand this boy — but for the first time, she thinks, maybe she could. Maybe it was only that she did not put in enough effort before; maybe it was in that she did not know, before this, that her son could love so much, despite all his hurts.
It is too late to be his mother, perhaps. But she can try to keep her mind open, try to solve the mystery that this shadow-child has always been.
"Why did you do it?" She asks, after what feels like hours of staring at the girl.
"What?" His voice wavers: he is taken by surprise. The boy sounds tired. Tired, tired, tired; perhaps in that, he takes after her. She has always been exhausted by responsibility herself.
"To bind yourself to the underworld," she says. "To marry the girl so fast."
"It doesn't matter." His voice is cold.
"It is just odd." She leans back in her chair, tries to look at ease. "You are so careful a man, and yet you throw yourself into life-long commitments."
He is silent for another moment; the girl cries out, and she watches, as with infinite care, he blots at her cheeks, wordlessly runs his fingers over her lips. He sighs.
"I think you should leave," he says. The rejection comes so fast it takes her by surprise; it cuts, like a knife.
"I am only trying to figure you out," she says. "My son."
"It is too late for this." He stands, leaves the girl's side to open the door. "Please," says her son. "I — I cannot, not anymore, not today."
"Alright," she says. "I will be in my quarters if you need me, my son."
He nods, offers nothing in return. He is already walking back to the girl's bed before she is out the door. She turns around only once, but she does regret it.
She sees him laying on top of the covers, his head pressed to hers, his hands wrapped over the girl's shoulders. It is the look of a lover in agony, of comfort given by another as best they can.
She swallows, and turns away, and listens to the slow and steady slap of her feet upon her strange son's cold, hard stone.
Tomorrow will bring a new day, and she is sure it will bring Zeus with it.
But Rhea does not know what that day will bring with it, and the underworld offers no answers. She stares out one of Hades' many new windows, and wonders: is there any end to this, but revolution, madness, and death? Rhea watches for Zeus and Demeter, her eyes ever-steady on the horizon.