Persephone | Julia Rayne (springforth) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-12-27 10:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | persephone |
Who: Persephone (springforth)
What: Falling into things.
When: The past two weeks.
Where: DIS Inc., the Hades-Persephone domicile.
Warnings: None.
From one prison, straight into another. Julia initially bucked and balked at the idea -- Roth was abhorrent to her, everything she hated about men and everything she made a concerted effort to avoid (hence acquiring ones who were struck complacent by beautiful women, who found her soft, detached smile arresting and conceded when she held herself back rather than love freely as they'd hope). Persephone merely fell into the role as if it were made for her (and it was, it would always be). The shareholders did object; she came into the office cool and confident, raised her chin, somehow managed to look down her nose at them, assessed and found them wanting. The law did indeed object; District Attorney Malory's office was in an uproar, Assistant DAs scrabbling over one another in outrage, and Roth's money handled the main of it so that she could chart DIS Inc. through troubled waters while its master recuperated from her own loving hand.
She took one of his credit cards, disappeared for a day and built a new wardrobe. (Because there was no going back to the much-loved apartment Hades defiled; everything there might as well just burn, for what it was now worth to her.) Julia went to work cool and collected, sat in Nicholas's chair at Nicholas's desk and attended board meetings which left his underlings confused -- wasn't she just a design editor for some trite little home and garden magazine? Where did this woman come from, and what was wrong with Roth that he sprung her from jail and put her in his place? She touched everything in his office, stained it invisible and indelible with everything which was her, knowing that he'd see it bright and brassy-bold upon his triumphant return.
Persephone was the one to arrive during evenings, Persephone who always stopped at markets on the way back so that when she came through his door she was heels off, bare feet padding into the kitchen with arms full of chilly flowers and fruits and fresh bread. Persephone who made her husband's house her home: some days the little once-queen ignored him utterly, littered the hardwood with clothes on her way to draw a bath (dark blouse, dark skirt, dark hose peeled from her legs and beneath it all everything pale and perfect white, a winter's laughing 'see how unblemished I still am? See how unaffected you've left me?') and lingered as if there were all the time in the world. She ignored thin-lipped Hades of the iron control, came out swimming in one of his robes and poured a glass of his wine before curling up with notes for the next so-short, so-cold day. Other times it was a beeline made straight for him, when he sat as if ensconced in his throne and Persephone of the sharp gaze and the small smile appeared to sit across from him, end of the workday unpinned with hair coming undone and skirt hiked up to accommodate comfort rather than decorum. She offered teasing little details of what went on in his absence, held a paring knife in one practiced hand and skinned an orange the way he did her lover, until she was impatient and sighing and gave up to pierce the thing with fingernails even as she watched Hades unblinking and placed a stockinged foot on his knee. (And looked always to his stitched side, fond and hungry as could be.)
She hung a bell on the balcony, placed birdseed outside in laughing tribute to her strange new friend of the changeable face and the trickster's eyes. When Christmas came -- Christmas, which was really just another winter day for them to taunt and tease one another in all their half-madness -- there was little note of his mail until Hades opened a card and fell headlong into the past. He called her Kore -- Kore, who was little more than memory these days -- and put himself into a fit until he was bleeding through another shirt and Julia tilted her fair head just so and Persephone straddled him while prone to get a better look at his handsome, cruel face which was always cool to the touch. Unexpected, this bizarre mania, but not unappreciated. She ducked her head, came in close to lace Hades's fingers with hers above his head, laughed muffled music against his neck, buried him in blonde hair as she smiled "oh, you bastard" and "oh, you vile thing" and "oh, darling" well into the night.