WHO: Demeter & Poseidon WHEN: Olympus, Ancient Greece WHAT: The Fish King and his attempts to mess with big sister a little more WARNINGS: mentions of rape, violence
Five months ago Demeter had been searching for her missing child and instead been found by Poseidon. They'd been so close once but now her little brother was a monster she didn't know, and he proved that by forcing himself on her. Demeter had never more needed comfort and help than she had when Poseidon had taken advantage of her and she knew then that anything in him she had loved was dead.
So any love she still bore for him she tore out of herself. Then she found out what had happened to Persephone and she tore from herself the lingering love for Zeus and the much truer love she had still held for Hades.
Betrayal on all sides and somewhere in the darkness her daughter was being kept hostage because of a pomegranate.
And even as Demeter kept the earth dead and barren, within her two children were growing. She knew them well already, these children of her violation, although to the outside world she was only just showing.
In her palace on Olympus - its fields stretching out beyond them, something that shouldn't possibly be able to exist - Demeter sat on her throne and watched the world below. But then she felt the presence behind her of him for the first time since the assault and she stood, ice in her eyes as she saw him. "You are not welcome here," she spat.
Demeter had refused him over and over again, resonating a deep and dangerous anger within. He'd given her every opportunity to love him, to be the Queen he desired of her, but she had ignored it. Demeter was the first woman to have his heart and the first to reveal his darkness. After Medusa, Poseidon unleashed a monster that there was no turning back from. That resentment he should have for violating his sister was not there. He was strangely satisfied with himself, taking from her anything he could. In his mind he'd delivered the same anger she had pulled out of him in her refusal.
Yet, he still loved her in a twisted fashion. She was punished for her stubbornness. If she had only consented, this deep, black void between them wouldn't be there.
He approached her kingdom with a smug twinkle in his eye, walking toward her slowly as if each step taunted her. When he was just within a few feet he paused holding his arms out. "Don't you miss me?" he said cocking his head, teeth gleaming with that distorted smile and a respective bow.
The Poseidon she knew was gone. The Poseidon she knew would never return.
"Not particularly," Demeter replied coldly, glaring at her younger brother. She'd trusted him with her life not that long ago. She'd trusted him with everything she was and he had betrayed that trust in the very worst way.
Inside, one of the immortal children kicked at her, perhaps feeling the presence of its father. She knew already that one of them was not going to emerge with her looks. This one that kicked at her now, it was going to be born hoofed and furred, a product of how it had been made. She put a hand against her stomach to settle the colt-boy and soothe him.
"Unless you're here to grovel for my forgiveness," Demeter told him, "then I'm not interested in your company."
Poseidon emerged from the darkness that followed him like a black cloud, it suited the man he'd morphed into. A man that wouldn't take no for an answer. Once she had given him her compassion, now her very tongue spat it's nasty venom.
His lip twitched, pulling her hair back from her neck as he stood behind her, eyes looking upon her with that lusty glance. The touch was gentle, soft, almost demeaning in it's honesty.
He leaned down so she could feel his breath hot upon her ear.
"I don't care," was his slow and spelled out reply. She had lost the right to have his compassion when she'd taken his heart from him.
To be touched by him was now something Demeter would never allow willingly again. Her lips curled up into a snarl and then she drew backwards from him. As she did she, she twisted her wrist in the air and from nothingness came a golden glow that then formed itself into the sickle that had castrated Ouranos, the same ever-sharp sickle that she had fought with against the Titans when the Olympians through them down. She was the Earth Mother, but also was Demeter the Lady of the Golden Sword and Poseidon was going to be reminded by that.
The razor-edge of the blade caught the light. "Go on, brother," she told him, tilting the scythe. "Touch me again." The blade she used for her harvests now but it would know the taste of blood again tonight if Poseidon made one more move toward her.
He stepped back with a hiss when she pulled out her weapon. He was not unfamiliar to it, but he had not been on the other end of it before. That shiny blade staring at him, laughing in his face as she was now under that angry tone.
For a moment he looked in awe that she was actually taking the initiative to fight him. "Really?" he said in a derogatory tone. "Sent legless, poisonous beasts into my ocean," his finger lined the edge, it slicing through the soft flesh that padded his finger. He drew his hand back with anger. "Now you want to fight me?" There was that demeaning laugh, but it held back the boy inside that had always just wanted love. Even his sister had refused him that.
Demeter found herself smiling at the mention of the snakes. "I'm glad you've noticed my little gift," she told him and then laughed. "Knowing how you always loved my beasts, I thought it only fitting. I provided you with some of the most venomous of my favourites."
"Walk away, Sea King," Demeter snapped, tightening her grip. "I'm offering you a mercy you don't deserve."
Legless creatures, bellies that slithered in the ground. They had no place in his oceans and yet she'd turned them loose. His disgust for the beasts perhaps stemmed from Medusa's transformation. That had been a huge turnoff.
"They belong buried in the ground," he took a step closer and wedged his words deeper, "just like that darling girl of yours." His smiling face turned sour, swallowing heavy. If Hades could take her daughter, Poseidon could (and had) taken her trust.
"Mercy?" A huff as he shook his head, hand tightening into a fist. "You offer me nothing." There was a hollowness in his voice, biting back that adoration he'd held for her for so long, hoping, for more from her. "You made this bed for yourself. You don't get to tell me to walk away." Did she really think she could insult him like that?
Fool brother, he should have known better. But instead he kept pushing, kept demanding, kept cutting into her. Once Demeter would have done anything to protect him - just as she would have protected all of her brothers - but now she had no such feelings for him.
Perhaps he thought she was too gentle to harm him, but then he underestimated her strength. She was an Olympian, a daughter of the same ruthless father as he was, and she shared the same ferocious nature.
So he ignored her words and Demeter wouldn't play his games any longer. The scythe sang through the air, wielded as easily by Demeter as though it were a part of herself. It was, in some ways. As soon as she had found this weapon among her crops, the blood of their grandfather long washed away, Demeter had known that it belonged to her.
The golden blade of Kronos would cut through anything and even an Olympian's flesh couldn't withstand it. She felt only the slightest pressure when the scythe hit Poseidon's arm and then sliced through it, as easily as it sliced through heads of wheat.
Take, take, take, that's all Poseidon could do with this hunger for everything. When he couldn't have it, he destroyed it. Demeter was as much a match as any, but he hardly expected her to take a swing at him, especially one that ripped flesh.
He gasped with grueling pain, his golden ichor coating that shiny blade like honey. The blood of a god was much sweeter than that of a mortal, but Poseidon's had turned cold.
Dropping to his knees, his good arm holding him up he threw her a nasty stare, his one arm shaking. For a moment he looked at her with disbelief. Up until now Demeter had never harmed him or even thought to, but he'd broken something in her.
Demeter looked down at him coldly, wishing that she had done this before he'd dared to violate her.
"The next swing removes your head," Demeter told him seriously, "and you may join our brother in his dark kingdom." She felt unmoved witnessing his pain. This was not her brother any more and she would waste no love on him. She would waste no love on any of her brothers. She would give it only to those that deserved it from this moment forward.
All that energy raced out from him, the very ground she stood on shrieked with his pain. It rumbled her kingdom wall with shattered cracks along the floor.
If he could have laughed he would, but his hollowed eyes looked at her troubled. The Poseidon she'd cared for was fragmented like the ground. His cracks had started early when jealousy seeped in. She had been the only one he trusted and she turned her back on him.
"I only wanted you," he said with a hateful tongue laced with hurt. With the situations reversed all he could think about was himself. He'd not apologized to her and he never would.
"You only wanted to take your own pleasure with no care for my pain," Demeter spat. "You disgust me. You are not my brother any longer." And then she kicked out at him, catching him in the side hard before drawing back.
"Gather your limb if you wish to keep it, sea king," she told him, turning her back to walk away. "But do not darken my home again, for next time there will be no mercy within me."