WHO: Melpomene, Alan, Apollo, Urania, open to the Muses WHEN: Tuesday WHERE: Melpomene's WHAT: It's baby time! WARNINGS: Heartache. Just so much.
Melpomene woke up as a slight pain rippled across her belly, and she pressed her face into her pillow and waited until it passed. After weeks of Braxton Hicks and only an hour or two of sleep, hoping that it might be the real thing was a bit of a stretch. If they were real labour pains that meant the end was in sight and it seemed more believable that she’d be stuck in this purgatory of false labour and insomnia forever.
The muscles through her whole body ached, it was early and dark, the pain faded, and she slipped back into restless sleep.
All her sleep lately had been restless. Everything about her lately had been restless. Even Ares had told her to go home and rest, last time she'd seen him.
~
More ripples interrupted her sleep, little bolts of lightning through a thundercloud. Melpomene squeezed her eyes shut and squeezed her fist into the pillow. She curled up a little more around her belly but there wasn’t much curling she could do, and waited till each one passed.
~
The first thunderclap that really made her gasp came near the middle of the morning. She sat up, her arms wrapped around herself.
Babies she thought. Babies are a whole lot easier to steal when they’re no longer inside of you.
She wrapped herself tight in her quilt, and squeezed her eyes shut, and told herself firmly to rest, but sleep utterly failed as a coping mechanism. Her mind was firing on all cylinders, and after two more so-tight-she-might-snap cramps she hauled herself out of bed and into the shower, hoping the heat of the water would help.
~
So many times in Melpomene’s life she’d been accused of wanting an audience – an accusation so banal it made her angry – she was made for audiences. Her power was in creating things that resonated with audiences, be it one soul or tens of thousands. What was a muse without an audience? What was Clio without all those who cared about history? What was Urania without her scientists in their endless pursuit of the nature of the universe? What was Erato if she never sparked that warm, deep down throb of desire?
Calliope had said they were people, but they weren’t. They were Muses. They were the effect they had on the world.
Without an audience her existence was a scream into a void no one heard. And people got angry at her for trying to save herself from this fate? Of course they did. People would probably be a hell of a lot happier if she just faded quietly into oblivion and left them alone. Certain Muse sisters. Specific Olympians. Various Merry Men. Well. She wasn’t built for other people’s happiness, was she?
No, she was built for rawer emotions. Like the ones she was feeling as the day bore on: terror, desperation, defiance. Right now, as the sun made its way higher through the sky and her muscles contracted so tight they felt like they were on fire, everything felt like an emotion. Firerods of pain shot up her back, down her legs, and she crawled back onto her bed and bit down hard on her pillow.
Fuck everyone felt like the strongest emotion of all. Melpomene sobbed it out loud, but there wasn’t anyone around to hear.
~
There were things she knew she should do. She should call Calliope, she knew she should. But fear galloped through her - what if she ended up in hospital of course she was going to end up in hospital people died in hospital and babies were taken away from mothers in hospital and she didn’t want to go to hospital she didn’t she didn’t - and fear won that moment, and she didn’t call. She struggled to her feet to move toward the baby’s room, but only made it halfway before she had to stop, and let the cramp force her down onto her knees beside the couch.
The pain stole her memory of what she had been trying to do, and after it passed she stayed on her knees, gripping the couch and breathing, offended at how bad it had hurt. Was her last labour this painful? No, but that had been with a mortal husband, not Ares. Of course her body was turning into a battlefield.
Why was she out of bed? Oh, right, her bag. Calliope had forced her to sit down on the end of the bed in the spare room, set an open bag beside her and said right, what things are you going to take to hospital? You point at them and I’ll pack.
She’d made her write down what she wanted as a birth plan, too. But all Melpomene could think right now was Ares’ voice growling at her in his nightclub you ever just try taking things as they come?
Sometimes I let things take me she’d said, and he had, roughly, against the couch. The sound of paper tearing as she ripped up the plan was almost as satisfying.
Melpomene hauled herself back to her feet. What else could she destroy? A glass she’d left out on her kitchen island earned itself a swift death against the cupboard, and as another contraction built up she clawed her hands into her bookshelf and ripped as many books to the floor as she could manage, panting.
She’d craved eyes on her, that night in the club. She’d craved Ares’ audience, that night in the amphitheatre when he’d given her a throne at his side. She wanted all his men to know who she was, to wonder at what she could do.
Before that, with her show, she’d wanted to reach thousands – tens of thousands – making them feel, making them talk about the things she’d done that made them feel.
With Alan -
There were times with Alan when the only person she needed to see her was Alan. When he looked at her, there was never any doubt in her mind about her own existence, about the strength of it. He’d believed in her, and it had been enough.
Though of course she hadn’t seen that, not till she’d lost it.
She sobbed onto her stomach, tears staining her long grey shirt, kneeling on the floor surrounded by fallen books. He’d seen her, he’d truly seen her, and she wanted no one else, and she would have no one else. The sun was setting, and she did not reach for a lamp, letting the darkness softly take over her home. She didn’t want anyone in neighboring buildings to see, to witness her through the windows. She didn’t want anyone to see who didn’t know her, understand her.
Maybe there was no point at all in an audience if they didn’t even know what they were looking at.
Remind me I was once a goddess she’d begged of him, once, and he had, every time he spoke her name, he had. And sometimes, lying beside him in bed with his arm curled around her, (and only in the deepest part of the quietest of nights) she let herself wonder if there was any version of her origin where she’d been a woman first, a mortal woman, before a poet wrote godhood into her skin. If there was ever such a woman who inspired the first tragedy, long before the world decided that one of the Muse goddesses should preside over the genre, she was long, long lost to everyone, now, even her own memory. And Alan was no longer around to remind her of anything.
Grief poured out of her, tears coating her face, unstoppable. Unstoppable as the water seeping out between her legs.
This was the real thing. No stopping it. He was coming.
Her heart was a riot.
I’m not scared she’d told Alan, waiting for her scan. I don’t get scared.
But apprehensive is okay, he’d reassured her, effortlessly understanding. Tragedies have a lot of apprehension of things that are coming at you fast, don't they?
Melpomene cried a little harder onto the arm of her couch. “I’m not scared,” she whispered, but fear paralysed her anyway. Melpomene pressed her palm against her mouth, her sobs came from somewhere deep, but the fear came from somewhere deeper.
Fear of all she’d lost and all she had still to lose. It made her desperately try and grab something back, and her heart longed for the impossible, reaching back over that chasm toward the last person who had been able to reassure her about anything.