Chapter Text
Persephone snorts, watching the first springtime rain drench down a lot of winter fields. She is a woman half blessed and half cursed in that she is the only woman in the pantheon whose work isn’t instantaneous, 'sides her very own Mama: she looks at these fields, sorry fields, tiny things without a sprout of seed, on account of her husband’s capriciousness, and she thinks well, we have got a lot of work to do.
It’s not quite fair, but Persephone rolls up her sleeves, even as she gripes. Everyone else’s got their stories, it’s just this one is hers. Now, it might grate a bit that everyone else’s stories, their heroic tales, their romances – it only takes a minute to make a hero, to fall in love with a god, to come together or to fall apart. Persephone’s story ain’t never been no split-second tale, though; it’s a slow, slow siege, so slow that even when she’s thinking it’s finally feast-time instead of famine, here comes Scarcity and Adversity, running down on that train with its high lonesome call. Sometimes figuratively, mind; lately, mostly literally – mind that, too.
She thinks about that train, which has, at least, remained outside her earshot, and maybe it rains a little harder down on her wet spring night.
Now rain or shine, upstairs or down, Persephone is and always has been a woman given to drownin' her sorrows. Always has trended a bit low, her Ladyship of the Upside Down and Sometimes the Rightside Up too; Mama never could quite shake her frown and marrying Mr. Dark-and-Deep didn’t help chase those blues away, and neither does a little nip in her most treasured flask, no matter how much she keeps hoping it might. Poor little Persephone, never quite belonged no matter where her wind blows; spring’s a melancholy thing, anyway, she thinks. Always rain that brings the flowers, ain’t it so?
She lets it rain. April showers, after all.
It’s a seasonal pattern Persephone knows well, the rains just a part of her dance with Mr. Upside-Down, Mr. Death-Destroyer-Destruction. It’s as inevitable as death and taxes both, as he is himself, and ain’t that just the crux of it. They’ve got their ways and their means of which this is but the first: this will become a springtime shower of hesitant sniping, a summer of too brief sunshine-silence, a fall that explodes into passionate arguing, and, finally, a winter chill blowing the cold wind of buried resentments.
Wasn’t always that way – used to be the falls and winters weren’t so fallow if you catch her drift, and that’ll be something she’ll mutter under her breath in their little arguments when she waltzes by him, just low enough only he can hear her, and she’ll hear the fates humming any way the wind blows in the back of her mind. If she sucks in her conscience and plants a jealous kiss on his unmovable lips in response, well, then, ain’t no one who can complain, down there, about her downright contemptible morals. Her word is law second only to his and he’s never been so bitter to her that he doesn’t want her to sweeten him up with her sugar, so to speak. They still love one another, deep down, underneath it all; even if they’ve forgotten how to do it right.
Now in the old days – which are, to say, days that are sepia-toned in her mind, but not the simple black and white of her girlhood; their days go back a long ways, and as such old days cover a great deal of ground – it used to be easier to ignore the wrongness of his little lean-tos and his blinding lights and his decrepit tomb-towns; put a few drinks in her belly and she’d focus on just her-self for once, just Persephone her-self, and sooner or later she’d pull himself by his own starched collar from his own shantytown to their very own, long-abandoned bed and bring an early Spring thaw, rockin’ back and forth on the unyielding hardness that is himself.
In every way, mind, he is unyieldingly hard; hard man to love, a man made of iron, but love him she does, even if she’s had to kill herself and bring herself back to life to do it sometimes.
A green sprout bursts up from the ground; progress, of a sort. She’s careful not to squish it under her foot, not like how she wants to do to him, sometimes.
She might be up for two months already, but two months without him means two months to dwell on him without himself interrupting, so she dwells well and truly good on the old days, both good and not-so-good. Back then, in those good but not-so-good days that were old but not that old, the drugs and the booze worked enough, and she could focus on feeling only his pleasure in the slow grunt of his lips, the heat of his mouth at her throat; feel his immortal hands at her hips and know he found his hallelujah in the high-and-mighty pant of her cries, the slick-telling wetness of her thighs. Was a time long past when they could do that, when their foundation was rotting, but he still knew her as intimately as his own body and his own self and familiarity gave their world some badly needed structure. ‘Course even then there were resentments; be easier if he didn’t descend into madness every time she’s been gone more than ten steps from his august presence and of course, she is a saint in as such she has had to hear his eternal complaint of his ever-lasting loneliness, lover I was so lonely, every time she returns, which at this rate is more times than she can count.
But it was better, then. In those days that were bad but not-so-bad; sepia days, still tinged a little golden even if they were a bit dirty.
But it got worse.
It went bad so gradually Persephone ain’t even sure when the bountiful years went to sparse years and the sparse years went to bad years and then bad went to outright blight and famine. The Blight only crashed in last year, the year he brought that pretty little girl down, Eurydice, tragic little snake-bitten bride-child, and plastered Persephone in the girl’s comely looks: her pretty hair, her bright young skin, her clear-eyed sobriety. Was obvious what he wanted; wanted her to hate the girl, and love him. Well, Persephone pitied the girl, and hated him. He’d leered and loosened his tie, and Persephone went and got herself good and drunk, and she might have thought it was the end then, that he would introduce that girl to the pomegranate tartness of Mr. Hades’ ways, but it wasn’t the end, not at all. The boy came, and sang his song, and Hades, the unyielding and unyielded, the brick wall between the Heavens and the Hells, tumbled down, and took her hand, and offered her his love in a brick-red carnation that she clutched all the way back up to heaven.
And that one year of blight gave way to a new spring field, the one under her feet just now.
But the problem is, of course, that a new field can go in many ways. Too much planting, and you’ll choke the vines; too little tending, and the weeds run rampant. Now nobody upstairs nor down will say one word on them, offer not one word of advice or naysaying in their direction; everyone is just prayin’ maybe they’ll be a little more good this year than bad, that Persephone won’t frost Mama’s begonias before November-like and that he himself won’t be tearing down his august sister’s erstwhile peacock garden with a chilling wind come August, so they say, so they say.
Not to her, but she hears. The thing about being the drunk in the corner is no one expects Persephone to remember, but she remembers.
Always had a mind like a steel trap. Jaws like one, too, and her feelings for he himself are a confusing maelstrom of new growth that she sees echoed in what she plants. Little known fact but Persephone herself ain’t exactly all light, any more than he’s all dark; mother of the Venus flytrap, the cape sundew, and the sun pitcher, too, that’s Our Lady, who gives us poison and medicine both, the sweet-morphine drip of the dying and the blessed antibiotics of the saved-souls, hallowed be her name and Halle-fuckin’-lujah. She spends her spring and, now that he is of a mind to let her have one, for once, summer, sortin’ out feelings that are at best described as complex and at worst described as a fucking mess. She sips her beer lighter than usual and doesn’t go for the hard stuff so much on account of wanting to keep her mind more warm than fuzzy. Hermes’ eyes twinkle at her over his bar and she very kindly tells him, non-verbally, to go twinkle somewhere else, because she’s occupied.
And he himself, Mr. Flower-man, Mr. Death, Mr. Big-and-Strong, well, he don’t make one little peep. Seems he is occupied, too.
Because that’s the other thing about Mr. Hades’ ways, he who is almighty and all-consuming: he is a silent hunter. A woman don’t hear him until he damn well intends her to, and he being as quiet as he is in all things, she is not liable to hear from old man winter until such time as he decides to bring his frosty self crawling up from the ground to claim his time. He will come when he is ready, and it won’t matter what she thinks of the matter, except in as much as he knows her preferences are to have her time to do her work and perhaps if she is very lucky he will honor her preferences.
She is very, very tired of running on his stopwatch.
She has no power over him; has no power at all, as to what he chooses. Always been him who is the man holding out a hand, she who is the girl who takes it. He holds the watch, and he always seems to keep winding it a bit fast. She hates it.
She doesn’t really trust, at first, that he will let her have such times as she so pleases. Times being what they are, and all, and things so tender; doubt comes in, and picks at the bones of all the best intentions. But as March drifted into April and he seemed quiet, and April passes quietly too, and May also passes without incident, and Persephone, well, maybe more than fool’s hope burns up in her belly.
Course, it is only rightly then that Persephone, who has been so focused upon her own means and her own man, takes a while to notice that the boy never has come back to the bar since that fateful day he went way down under the ground. Or at least, if he did come on back, he sure ain’t here anymore. She doesn’t ask about that in May, don’t ask in June either; in her family, you don’t ask questions. Don’t ask why, don’t ask when, never nothing but trouble comes of that and they all know it. She wants to think maybe he took his girl somewhere nicer, maybe he ran off with her, maybe they’re happy, maybe there’s a sweet story those two have somewhere else.
But Persephone, she who is the Ends of the Mean, and the Means of the End, knows that the alternate outcome is all too likely. Every lover winds up downstairs in her cellar eventually.
Everyone but herself and himself, of course. Which brings her back to thoughts of him, and his ways, and how he ain’t even sent a damn calling card, or a plea for a phone call, or a single word, and that occupies her up until July, when she drinks just a bit too much moonshine on a hot summer day, when Apollo and Mama burn down the sky with a zeal they ain’t shown in a long age, and when she finally opens her big mouth and unleashes the sword of Damocles straight upon her immaculately coiffed curls.
“Brother,” she says, splashing just a bit a whiskey, for bravery, understand, brother, bravery; she’s been makin' an effort to avoid the harder stuff. “Whatever happened to your musician boy, and his girl?”
The look on Hermes’ face – Hermes is a messenger and a subtle one, one who will give you the inference and the plain – is nothing good. The look says Persephone should not have asked. His eyes go down, lips disappearing into the craggy lines of his mouth as he sighs, soft and not-a-bit-sweet.
“A love song, and a tragedy,” he says, and leaves it at that.
“You escort them back?” She asks, and tries to hide the curiosity in her voice, but oh she is curious, wouldn’t she like to see Hades’ face when those two lovebirds came tumbling down, or was it only one bird that crashed out of that bush? And just who, exactly, went tromping through their chance and ruined it, weren’t the task so easy and so fine, just a few steps, just a few steps of trust for love to see ya through? Just a few steps, just a few precious steps.
Too much. Trust, hardest thing to hold to, she thinks; especially if you were a woman who had been burned. Alike there, her and that little bird.
“The girl, yes,” he says, delicate; leaves her another drink, a beer with a chaser this time, cuz Hermes is a wise man and her brother knows when he’s breaking bad news. “Now him, I told him to wait, but…He didn’t. Moved out and up into the world, he did. We’ll meet again, I’m sure. Someday.” Of course they will, of course they will, soon as old Orpheus slips his coin for the final way down into Hermes’ palm. Hermes’ downcast eyes suggest he knows damn well that’s as soon as is likely.
She pounds the whiskey back first, firey-hot, and makes a little snarl that she tries to pass off as reacting to the burn. “To the house?”
“His office,” Hermes says; he raises one brow, then says, all quiet like, so she knows he is doing her a favor, because Hermes, that’s what he deals in, favors; any way the wind blows, that’s where the messenger goes. “Seemed like business to me, sister.”
“Himself is always business,” she says, though he isn’t, really, not at that. Quiet perhaps, but when his attention is on you, it is on you. Persephone has always been a little bit of the jealous type – she grew up in a household with a single Mama, and an absent daddy with a million children aside, Hermes being one of the better ones, and she knows how things go in the family. There’s a lot of love there, but most of it isn’t for spouses.
And so, she burns. She ain’t angry at the girl – isn’t that little girl’s fault, not a bit, she’d do the same were she in such a situation – but that don’t mean she has to like it.
Hades’ silence feels less-so lettin’ her be and more-so lettin’ himself be forewarned; if he has seen the children fail, she knows what hope he has that himself and herself can make it through the rough patch will crash down like his walls, brick by brick. Doubt comes in, and hope flies out.
Hades, he has never been one to believe things without evidence. Empirical data is his god, yes, even gods have somebody or something to pray to, brother. For him, it’s data, it’s proof, it’s precedent.
For her, it’s a vodka tonic.
She likes herself a good vodka tonic, and just about all vodka tonics are good. Vodka’s a great invention of the little humans: odorless, colorless, as inoffensive as water but with a good burn afterwards that lets you know it’s not just water that’s going down; the tonic adds just a bit of bittersweetness. Life’s like that, she’s found, the Patroness of Plenty: life’s all disappointment and celebration, and sometimes mixes of the two.
She prays, that night. Prays good and long and sips six vodka tonics down her gullet, gulp gulp gulp. Persephone likes to pray, she does. Ain’t a relapse, brother, it’s a religious experience. Hermes watches her with regretful eyes; he don’t like that she’s drinking so heavy. Never does, really.
“Sister,” he says, when she motions for a seventh. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“Ain’t gonna kill me.” She licks at her sixth glass with a brazenness that sober Persephone, that rare unicorn, would find a bit embarrassing, but that Persephone ain’t home right now and honestly, she’s been gone so long the room Persephone keeps in her soul for sober Persephone is getting downright dirty and full of cobwebs. “And it does keep me from killing him.”
He’s silent for a long moment after that, but he serves her a tonic – he’s dialed down the vodka, but only a bit.
“Makin’ it watered down still counts as interference,” she shouts, drunkenly. He shrugs and serves other patrons; he doesn’t like it when she gets loud. No one likes it when she gets loud but Persephone herself, and Persephone at least feels a little better when she’s muttering to herself. Himself and herself, that’s true of both of them: he mutters, and she mutters, and sometimes they spend all night staring at one another and muttering up all the reasons they hate one another while miserably loving one another too much to throw away that whole package.
Real messy, her and him.
She misses him.
She wonders what he’s doing, as she only allows herself to do after she’s had what drunk Persephone sardonically calls her religious experience. She thinks about him and wonders just what he’s doin’: hard at work, nose to the grindstone, oh yes, singlehandedly pursuing his goals with a heavy hand? Or is he at play, thrumming his little love-song in his throat for that pretty little songbird? Does she sing for him? Does he find it sweet? She growls again, orders again. She’ll drink ‘til she scrambles enough of her cellular matter so she ain’t gotta think that thought again. Jealous, she is.
She understands her big mean stepma, this year.
She drinks another couple drinks; mixes it up this time, gets winter-weight whiskey instead of vodka, and by gets she means she sneaks a few drinks out of her lucky flask because Hermes has well and truly given up on her, is avoiding her loud calls for the barkeep. This isn’t for the religious connection; this drinking is for of a more personal nature, gathering up a bit of his ghost on her lips.
“Hermes!” She shouts again; the bar is filling up, and it goes quiet at the sound of her bellowing, because Persephone is queen of Hell and she is Full of Religion right now, so full of it she can feel her daddy’s lightning rubbing through her palms. She wants to cause trouble. She wants to make a scene. She wants him. Hermes looks at her and she motions for a pencil and looks for paper. “Gimme – gimme something to write with.”
“What?” He looks at her like she’s crazy; she probably is. She’s got a tough life for the god damn queen of a third of the cosmos and accounting on her difficult marriage, it would be little surprise if she snapped.
“Pencil! Pen! Whatever!” She grabs one of his cocktail napkins; it’s a dainty thing for such a run-down little drinking joint, with goldish trim on the sides. He always likes gold trim, her man; taste as gaudy as new money, himself, and ain’t that a tragedy. No accounting for taste. “Wanna write – write himself a message.”
“You sure that’s a good idea in your state?” Hermes asks; she shoots him a look and he does as she asks because Persephone, well – she’s used to getting her way. Advantages of being loud, being stubborn. She shimmied her behind straight onto a throne, did you know that, brother? Had nothing to her but her country bumpkin charms and she made herself a Queen.
“I think I do what I want in whatever state I want to do as such.” She stares at the napkin, debates; himself being an unobliging sort, invitations to lure him top-side require a certain hand, a certain seductive technique. She wants to write have you been pounding yourself into that little quim but what she writes is, instead, I miss you. Let’s start over. She wants to write do you like her taste better than mine but what comes out instead is meet me at Hermes’ little hole in the wall tomorrow. You know where and when. What she wants to write is I want to inhale your face and what she writes is – well, what she writes is I want to inhale your face because Hades is a lot of things but subtle has never been in the top ten of his attributes.
She messily shoves the napkin towards Hermes who looks at her, then looks at the message she has jotted out.
“This is…” He presses his lips into a frown. “Why don’t you wait ‘‘til tomorrow to send this?”
“Give it to him now,” she snarls. “Tired of waiting.”
Quiet, Hermes says: “It’s only July.”
“Well,” she says, “seems to me that’s later than last year.” Sober Persephone would have protested and said she wasn’t going to go down with him, but Drunk Persephone, she’s more honest with herself. Truthfully, it seems just as likely she will as she won’t. Give her another ten vodka tonics and it ought to at least stun her conscience, at least for a little bit. She wants to go down a lil’ bit early this year anyway; wants to find out herself if he’s makin’ a right fool of her or if he’s staying true and suffering for it.
She wants him to suffer more than a little bit, and debates if this is nice as she licks at her flask. She decides after about ten seconds of sucking out the last bit of his whiskey that it doesn’t matter if it is nice; he’s never been particularly nice anyway. Or cared if she were, herself. She wants his loyalty. She wants him to remember who he married. She wants him.
He folds up the message, puts it in his pocket. “You sure you don’t want to reconsider?” He says in a voice that all but screams you should reconsider. “Ain’t just you riding on this whole balance, sister.”
“I’ve earned a time or two to be selfish,” she says, and he shoots her a filthy look. She just raises an eyebrow and looks back. Sober Persephone might have mumbled sorry, but Drunk Persephone is all about defending herself. And her rights. She’s sacrificed six months in either direction since she was old enough to marry him, which was truthfully not old at all, not at all, and she’s earned – earned the right. She has. She has. Take all you can get and make the most of it, right? Who could blame her for wanting to save her marriage? What a marriage it is.
“You’re the messenger,” she says. “So fly on down and away.”
He looks at her for a long moment, with a heavy glance. She smiles, and ain’t one thing nice about it.
“Go on,” she says. “I’ll watch the bar.”
And she knows it is a testament to how much Hermes loves her that he tosses the keys toward her with a long sigh, and starts his trip down toward that station, the one that only has one termination, and that termination being the only one that much matters. She watches the bar, is even good about it, she is, and only steals herself a couple of refreshments as payment. Doesn’t even take the expensive stuff.
She wakes up the next morning with a pounding headache and a barely remembered promise. Fuck. She looks at herself in the mirror, brushes her teeth something good, but doesn’t really get that grimy feeling out. Looks in the mirror: her face looks swollen, and her eyes are swollen too, and she ain’t sure if that’s from the drink or the worrying that caused it, or the long crying jag that started somewhere after locking up the bar thinking about himself and that pretty little canary – she could never drink enough to displace the image – and ended sometime before she fell asleep, though she is not certain when. She looks old, she thinks; can see a few lines starting to form there, which is saying something on someone so eternally young as she herself has always been. Not that he hasn’t aged in their relationship; he was always older but was a time when he had a head full of dark brown hair, and now his skullcap is white as snow. She tries to smile into the mirror; fails. Persephone, as always, is trending a bit lower in her moods.
Mama don’t even look at her when she goes out to the fields, not at first; Mama’s version of coping with her drinking has been to disapprove of it, in as much as Hades’ decision has been to accommodate it. She misses that part of her winter home, where he lets her keep her absinthe in the toilet tank and purposefully ignores the bottle of washbin gin that mysteriously gets refilled whenever she wanders out to what used to be her garden out back. Mama don’t put up with such in her house, according to that she cares about Persephone’s health more than her happiness.
Mama only very gently says, “Rough night?” when she winds up needing to break to be sick in some wheat fields. Not that it matters if she’s sick; Persephone can’t die, and the crops aren’t aware enough to be offended.
“What night isn’t?” She says.
Mama snorts, and that’s the end of it. Mama has always been a woman of action more than words; sometimes she reminds Persephone of her husband, but that ain’t a truth that can be commented upon as such without either party getting right mad at the comparison.
Hours later, so many hours later that Persephone has gone ahead and forgotten they’ve even talked about the subject, Mama circles back and says: “Why don’t you stay home tonight? Was thinkin' of making some cider.” That cider, Persephone knows, is only offered on account that it was, as a child, her favorite beverage. Persephone has not drunk non-alcoholic cider in forever and an age. Sometimes Mama doesn’t realize that, despite the fact Persephone comes home piss drunk most nights, she is not a child. Sometimes she thinks Mama would prefer she stayed one. Certainly, Mama would have preferred she never tied the knot with Mr. Underground, but that’s mothers for you. Never do approve of their children’s choices.
“Too hot for cider,” Persephone sniffs, all too delicate.
“Water, then,” Mama counters.
“I got plans.” Seph snaps a bit as she threshes wheat; an early harvest, this patch, but if she’s going down tonight, she doesn’t want the people up top to be without. Patroness of Plenty always delivers, even if sometimes it ain’t much.
“Getting drunk in Hermes’ bar,” Mama says, voice thick. Mama’s stubborn as a mule when she wants to be, and again the thought occurs that her Mama and her husband aren’t that different, not that different at all. “Ain’t, as such, plans.”
“Got a date,” she says. Mama’s back goes right still at that, and Persephone’s mouth twists into a little smile, because she knows Mama doesn’t approve and a bit of her, some long-buried, childish, peevish bit of her, is pleased with the thought. Pointless childhood rebellion, perhaps, but she’s never quite outgrown it.
“Who?” Mama asks, very quiet.
“Who do you think?” Mama shakes her head at her, the look on her face expressing her emotions better than words could: girl, you are being a fool-child, and were you a younger girl, I would spank you for your selfishness. Persephone shrugs it off, as she has shrugged off all her Mama’s criticism. She might not go down. She won’t allow herself to be sober enough to feel guilty if she does.
“You’re playin' with a blizzard,” Mama says, soft, and Persephone just shakes her head, and threshes wheat, over and over and over again, the scythe warm and inviting in her hands. It’s not an unapt comparison; he is old man winter, he is, and an asshole too, and it is just like him to freeze you out when you hunger for his love. Happens so quick you just go down ‘fore you even know you’re frozen. Don’t feel a thing.
Mama doesn’t talk again that afternoon, and Persephone doesn’t feel of the chattering sort either. She leaves a little early to freshen up and tells herself all the nervous butterflies in her belly are due to her anger at Mama, and not because she’s nervous that he might not show. She dresses herself up mighty fine; keeps the green but opts for pure lace, low-cut but not so much so she looks like she’s givin’ the farm away. Her Hades, he likes her lookin’ smart, likes seeing her in all the niceties he can buy: well-cut dresses, flawless jewels, and perfume whose price would make your eyes just water. She pulls on one of his pins, the little pomegranate red ruby, right at her bosom, and spritzes perfume he likes, fancy stuff that smells like roses and ambergris. Turns herself in the mirror, tries to make herself smile, and fails.
Persephone, as always, trends a bit low.