Hades ♚ Andrus Kalda (ofshadows) wrote in mythologs, @ 2012-03-02 23:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !zurvan, hades, persephone |
[closed/complete]
Characters: Hades (ofshadows) & Persephone (anironqueen)
Date/Time: When the memories returned.
Location: The tavern where Persephone works, Mictlan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: There is probably a cuss or two in there. Also, though nothing happens here, it must be said that Hades's mindset is not morally sound, potentially triggering, etc.
Summary: There are more years between the two than is acceptable to the Iron Queen, but her King persists.
It was strange to be alert and sure of one's self when one had though they had really known themselves. It was just like a little over a year ago when she first realized who she was. She didn't think it would happen again so soon but someone - Khaos? - liked to screw with them.
Unpleasant, truly. Persephone leaned her cheek against the broom handle, lips twisting a little this way and that. And now they were in this foreign world. It was going to be troublesome if they couldn't find a way back home.
Apparently, she was forgetting a wee detail. But that detail wasn't really little. It was husband-shaped and Underworld-flavoured.
Said detail would not allow himself to go unremembered for long. Hades made his way over to the tavern, unceremonious in his entrance. A few turned - it was strange to see a boy of seventeen hold himself as Hades did. As if his eyes and ears had already seen all there was to the world and deemed it lacking.
Hades directed himself to where Persephone was usually found. Leaning against the handle of her broom, she was far more vulnerable than the last time he had seen her. Thousands of years ago, and there was little in her that Hades found changed.
"Queen."
That title caught her off guard. Hermes wouldn't offer that, not without some lightness and jest she easily associated with him. And she didn't know who else near by could call her that. The Underworldlings likely wouldn't approach her with this much ease and confidence. So she began to turn, dreading who to expect (while knowing exactly who to expect).
Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh... "Goodness!" That shouldn't have come out but it did and she pressed her lips together, resisting the urge to blurt out more. He was so very youthful, triggering in her a memory of their son Zagreus. Of Makaria and...well, poor Melinoe was not his. Her father was such a fiend.
"Hades." A coolness wrapped around her as she began to process the boy before herself. "Hades? Are you in there?"
Maybe she should try sign language instead of speaking.
"Ridiculous question." Hades eyed her steadily, critically. Without his memories, he had found her beautiful. With them, that did not change. But there was something distinctly different - as if her features had taken on a darker quality because she belonged to him.
He decided to humor her. "I am Hades, son of Cronus, ruler of the Underworld and the shadows." There was a coldness to his words that had not been there before the memories returned. The boy of Mictlan had not been naive - a cold and quick murderer, in truth. But Hades transcended even that. He did not see himself as death, nor the bringer of death. Simply its master. "And I took you for my own."
The handle of the broom was suddenly twisted between her hands. The Hades she had known before, in Zurvan, had been manageable in a way because she had found him near sweet in his own way. This one reminded her well of the one who abducted her, the one who had given her the chance to rise as queen of the Underworld.
And under normal circumstances, she would be prepared to tease him, even easily fold into the happily submissive place she always went with Zeus. Her husband and her parents were the three who could put her in such a spot. But this was new. Foreign and challenging. Unnerving. "Yes, as a man, if I recall. It seems you have returned to me just shy of drinking age." Another jest. She wasn't sure if she could blame Hermes for rubbing off on her for that.
Her humor was lost on Hades. This body was younger than the one in New York, but nonetheless it was simply a body. Merely a housing for his being, a being that had never for a moment appreciated condescension.
"You would have my body define me then?" His tone, though unnervingly calm, was severe. An eye swept over the nervous twists of her hands with mild curiosity.
"Gods seldom age but you weren't a boy when you were my husband. You weren't so...youthful." She restrained herself from informing him maybe Hebe had something to do with this but Persephone opted not to. Thus far, her humour had not gotten her very far. In fact, it was making her more nervous.
"I..." A faint laugh came and she let go of the broom, letting the sound of it clatter against the floor help her fill in the space between her words. "I don't know how to look at you and think 'husband', ...husband. Hades. Husband." At least 'uncle' wasn't coming up, right? Right? "I don't know how to deal with this surprise. You...a boy. You're a boy. A boy."
Repetition was not helping. She was going to surely flee if she said boy once more. Her lips sealed themselves swiftly, preferring if he spoke. He had far better control of himself than she did of herself, after all.
But she was the one behaving like a child. Such a skittish little thing. Hades would have to break her in again. Not now, but if she resisted, soon.
"Since you are so keen on establishing your supposed superiority in age, my dear Queen," Hades drawled. "How would you have this situation play out? Let us see all the wisdom you have gained from years beside my throne." As if to punctuate the statement, he pulled out a chair and sat. While the lower height should have given him a disadvantage, his bearing and posture was so confidently languid. So much like a king at home on the seat of his power.
If Persephone knew his thoughts on her behaviour, she would surely protest. How would he have handled things if she were, say, eleven? "Superiority!" Hardly. The idea of it with Hades was near laughable. No, she wanted familiarity. She had been the innocent who had been stolen, taken by an uncle who had been allowed the abduction thanks to her own father. Two men, brothers who didn't care what her poor mother thought or wanted.
Typical men. "I never said that." Her hands flexed then clasped together, fingers twining tightly. Even with him seated, she felt small and unsure with a great need to run to her missing mother, to the arms of her father who, in fairness, allowed the whole thing in the first place.
Typical father. "My, my, my." Her chin did not lift arrogant but lowered so she could look him in the eyes. Those chilling blue eyes. "You come to me with the manner that you took me and then made me your wife and queen but you cannot say 'our throne'. You must say 'my'. No, you have not changed inside. I can see this and understand it. But do not expect me to sink to my knees and accept this! I feel almost as if looking at you the wrong way might be illegal!" How could she explain her feelings, explain that the twist in things had thrown her so off-balance? The words simply wouldn't come to her tongue.
We didn't sit on the same chair. Hades was sorely tempted to point out, but such an infantile remark would only be another emphasis on his age. Perhaps if he said it in such a manner that a parent addressed his petulant child - but to belittle Persephone would likely incense her more. He had not patience for her skittishness.
"You didn't answer my question. What would you have us do?" Not that he'd adhere strictly to whatever she said. But her opinion had its merit, and if he found something in it that was agreeable to him, he would compromise. If not, he would be unyielding.
"If I knew, I would say. But I don't know. I have always handled the subjects, not my husband. Not my father or mother." And she could not handle these three. Even in her most furious of moments, she buckled to them, let them make her decisions and accepted them. Her life choices were not hers to make but she could rule over all others with an iron fist.
Really, it was quite ridiculous. She finally took a chair and seated herself, keeping herself facing him rather than opting to sit beside him. Such a position...no, not yet. She wasn't ready. "However could I tell you how strange this is for me? How can I explain it when I look at you and want to demand if this is a cruel joke? I hear you, I understand you but looking at you and obeying such a young and sweet face--" Ok, odd choice of words but rolling with it. "It's difficult. It has thrown me off. I don't know what to do, Hades."
Hades regarded her coolly. "And what if we wait for this young face to become burdened with wear and tear? Still, you will find your container older than mine, and you will have grievances."
Let her think she could speak so freely against him without consequence. Persephone had nothing to fear from him yet. He would be gentle now - or however gentle Hades could get - because he had yet to solidify a plan. Hades was not an impulsive sort - willful, demanding, but never without meticulously organized direction. Even in his first abduction of Persephone, he had taken care to garner Zeus's words before springing into action. Hades preferred passivity to dynamics, but never let it be said that he did not know how to act. And act he most definitely would.
Yes, let her think she was safe. That he was not going to eventually drag her kicking and screaming to wherever he wished. Svarga, perhaps, if she behaved prettily. Glastheim, if she kept this up.
A soft groan escaped her and she pressed her face to her hands. "That is hardly what I mean as well. I would be turning twenty-nine if we were back in New York. I am just a few years younger here. I do not believe my age to be so great, Hades. However, you are misunderstanding me."
Of course she knew he would age alongside her. There was no other way when it came to mortal life. She didn't fear old age. she was intrigued that she even could age because it was something denied to the gods. Yet, at the same time, she compared her body to that of what she represented: spring. And as she would grow older, she would eventually grow barren and then wither away. That did not appeal to her at all.
But none of that was the point then. "You expect me to simply do what? Accept you as you are? Not feel awkward or troubled? Be blind to the fact that I do feel discomfort and almost as if you should be asking me to your high school prom?"
"I expect that you acknowledge me as Hades in every aspect." Hades rose, relishing that at seventeen, he was taller than most grown men. (He did not bother to tell her he would be nineteen on Earth - an infantile detail, two years was.)
"If there is discomfort, it will be swallowed." The sentence was punctuated with a thud as Hades returned the chair to where he claimed it. There was no fury nor impatience to his tone, nothing at all like a dog so eager to rut with its bitch. He was not like his brothers, with appetites as vast as the skies and seas they'd claimed. Hades had taken the earth - steady. But unyielding. He would brook no resistance on this matter - Persephone was his, regardless of the body that contained him. For her to resign herself to this was all he required. He knew better than to push anything other than simple acknowledgment at this point.
But the rest would surely follow, and as things had been before, it would likely take years. Though Hades did not enjoy repeating himself, he would indoctrinate Persephone all over again. With doubled severity to ensure that she did not forget her lessons so easily as she did now.
Persephone didn't take her eyes of him, watching him, trying to focus on parts of him that didn't make him so...young. So startlingly young. "I hear Hades, I understand you're Hades but when I look, I think of our son," she explained, feeling it to be in vain. "I think 'such a lovely boy' and then I flinch because I know I'm judging your...exterior."
Her knuckles pressed to her lips, hard enough so she knew her front teeth would leave marks on the inside of her lips. "You want me to swallow my discomfort. You think it's that simple. What if I were a small child? No. What if I were a well-aged old woman? Wouldn't you think 'I kidnapped this creature?'. Would you not feel at a loss, Hades? Or are you able to adjust so well to everything that you would accept everything as it is?
"No matter your answer, I can't just do that. You must be patient. It's not a request, it's not something flexible. I must have time."
"Then you will have it."
Again, Hades reminded himself that the time was not yet right to impose his will. He did not bother to tell her his answers to her questions. An overwrought woman might consider them sentimental, and while he begrudgingly admitted that she was taking this with some grace, Hades was not about to risk her forgetting their arrangement. He had been soft with her on occasion, but only when she acceded to him. Completely and entirely.
His coldness would be a reminder that she was failing him by not accepting.
Failure was her biggest of worries and it made her feel so terribly inadequate (if only Minthe was watching, how that nymph would be so amused at her expense!). Oh, she did feel the pinch, she knew perhaps the blind eye would have been better but this had still been in her husband and she thought - assumed - that she could get away with a frankness she couldn't with her parents. Honesty, wasn't that valued? Even a bit?
A lesson was learned and she resisted one last humour-filled comment. Instead, she nodded, lips sealed to avoid some scolding or cutting remark.
Whether she could deal with the change thrown at her or not, she would have to find out. As soon as possible.