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 Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:19 pm
Persy sighed as she watched the three godlings leave, then turned and collapsed onto the couch again, rubbing her temples with a soft whimper of pain. She was tired, she was weak, and she couldn't even do anything when it mattered most. Abbot...Abbot was as good as dead. She hadn't wanted to say it in the presence of children, but the Blacksuits didn't take kindly to those they took in, and a rescue had never even been attempted, much less succeeded.
And the worst of it was that, in her state, Persy would know it when he died. She could feel deaths all across the City, she could almost taste each passing on her lips, and when his came...
The worn out goddess wiped tears that had brimmed over her eyelids, curling up among the cushions that her feeble fingers clinged to for some form of support. Screw her tough image, she needed time to think about the whole thing, and it involved tears.
Things couldn't get much worse.
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:32 pm
Des followed Persy back into the living room, a worried look pasted over his face. Persy wasn't well. She hadn't been well, and those three hooligans barging in at three in the morning certainly hadn't helped. And Des was worried and confused. Abbot? Blacksuits? Vlad? Kidnapping? He thought back again to the three-headed dog, how it had obeyed his commands though he had never seen it before.
He watched Persy collapse, torn between rushing to comfort her and rushing to leave her be. She tried so hard to be strong, and yet something was eating her from within. He could see it in her eyes, how dull they were. It hurt him.
Des loved Persy. He knew it, though not how he had come to possess such a love, or why it persisted. He only knew that he loved her, loved her with every fiber of his being. He had been born to love her, it seemed. And to see her suffer and to not be able to help was torture.
He made his decision and sat beside her on the couch.
"You want to talk about it?" he asked meekly, although he sincerely hoped she would let him know what was going on.
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:55 pm
Persy heard the man's steps before she saw him, and with a flustered sweep of her hands she wiped her eyes, pulling herself up into a sitting position at a painfully slow rate. The look she gave Des was clearly unwelcome, but he still sat there with that expectant stare, using eyes that couldn't have known the sufferings he'd caused, the harm that he'd done. As it was, Des was innocent to his former crimes.
"No," she snapped at him, curling her fingers in her lap as she looked away, scowling. Deep down, she knew Des didn't deserve the treatment she was getting, didn't have to tolerate it, and the moment he realized that, she would be alone. She also knew she couldn't afford to be alone in times such as these, and that, regardless of what she told herself, she couldn't blame Des any longer. Deep down, she knew she was wrong, and she realized that deep down was all she had to rely on.
"...Those three came to tell me something important. The man, Abbot...we were good friends about fifteen, twenty years ago. Drinking buddies, I guess. And...this group, the Blacksuits, got him. And Blacksuits don't tend to give people back in very good condition...if they even bother to send the body." Looking up from her folded hands, she stared Des straight in his innocent eyes, her own expression full of resolve and pain. It was about time he knew.
"...Tell me, what did you notice about all of the children? The ones that came tonight, the ones you've seen at Seasons...what do you see?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:06 pm
Des looked down briefly, processing this information. That was a time before he'd known Persy, but to really think about it, he couldn't remember much before Persy. He supposed he had had a childhood, parents, siblings, friends, but only the last ten years were clear. Before then it got foggier and foggier and then vanished entirely into the mists of history.
He thought about the boys who had just left, and about every single child he had seen come and go from seasons.
"Tails," he said, finally. "Feathers. Gills. Strange clothing. Weapons. Odd eyes. Pig noses. Wings." Once he said one thing, the thoughts wouldn't stop. It was a laundry list of peculiarities. "Pointed ears," he added, finishing the list off.
His hand rose almost involuntarily to fiddle with his own ears.
"Pointed ears," he repeated. He had always supposed that was sort of like having ear lobes or not, or being able to roll your tongue. All in the genetics. Persy had them, too.
His brow wrinkled in confusion. Was that to say they weren't just a normal variant?
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:28 pm
Persy froze, watching him touching his pointed ears. He was getting it, making a connection. That made things a little easier for her, at least, and she mimed him by putting her own hand to one of her ears, tracing the lobe where it pointed ever so slightly. "That's right, pointed ears. Pointed ears, and sometimes, green facial markings, floral hair accessories...what I'm trying to say is, those children and I, we're...not normal. Some of us aren't even human."
She paused again, beginning to wring her hands. This is where the hard part came in. "Would you believe me if I told you I was over three-thousand years old?" Her face was entirely serious, if not still a bit hesitant; she didn't know what he was going to say about all this.
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:35 pm
Des eyed her suspiciously and reminded himself that she was sick. He wanted to accuse her of being delirious and to tell her to go to sleep...
...but...
...He had a feeling she was being deathly serious. He thought about how long he had known Persy, and how she hadn't seemed to have aged at all in that time. If she hadn't aged in ten years, how was 3000 years much of a stretch? He'd never stopped to think about how old Persy was. They'd seemed to be the same age, which was...
...There were a lot of things Des had never though about. A lot of things he had simply pushed to the back of his amnesia-addled mind and simply tried to conveniently forget. He rubbed his ear, feeling the place where the two seams of cartilage became one in a fine point.
He nodded slowly. "I think I would."
The three headed dog growled impatiently in his brain and chewed on his ears.
"But where do I fit in?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:46 pm
Once again, Persy hesitated: perhaps he was getting all of this a little too fast. She wasn't sure if she could tell him, now that she was staring the situation down in the face, and it flustered her, to be at such a threshold. Once she told him...there would be no going back. She could lose everything she'd worked for. And yet, he was still looking at her, accusing her with his innocence. He had to know.
"How much Greek mythology do you know?" She asked, standing and moving to a bookshelf in the nearby hall. She found a dust-covered book and wiped it clean, the cover leathery and worn. Fumbling through the pages, she half-grimaced when she reached a dog-eared spot, then stepped back towards Des. He wouldn't have known that she had put the book there when she'd first put his apartment together, and guessing by the dust, hadn't even noticed it among the other titles.
Silently, she sat beside him, pointing out the image of a young woman running through a field amongst her peers, long brown hair swept by the wind into vibrant green eyes, a jovial expression on them not seen by anyone this century. "You probably won't believe this, but..." She slid her finger over the name inscribed on the page, shortening 'Persephone' to the first five letters by blocking the rest out, and hoping that Des would make yet another connection.
"Do you know the story of Persephone?"
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:03 pm
"A little," said Des, eying the page. It all seemed familiar now, sort of. But not. It was a feeling akin to awakening from a dream and not being able to recall it, only that there had been a dream.
He stared at those five letters for a long time, and then glanced at Persy. He was now a little uneasy. After all, he was sitting next to a goddess. He found believing easier than the alternative - that Persy was absolutely crazy. There was reassurance in the supernatural, something that made everything make sense. The strange children, the lingo and codes, Persy's illness that had begun in the autumn and had now confined her to the apartment.
He had read the story once, ten years ago, when he first moved in. The leather-bound book had stood out among the paperbacks and modern dust-jackets. He had thought that Persy had left it there by accident.
The dream lingered at the edge of his consciousness, insubstantial and inconclusive. The more he tried to grasp at it, the further away it got. He had no memories until ten years ago. They simply didn't exist.
"I don't think i have any other choice than to believe," he conceded. "I don't remember how to do anything else."
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:18 pm
"You wouldn't remember," Persy explained, turning the page. The next showed a scene far less happy than the first: the same girl she'd pointed to was now on a chariot, held by a man with dark hair and dark eyes, the both of them on a ride that left the grassy fields and approached a dark, barren land. Persy knew it as the Underworld, but she wondered if Des would understand. In the background, a three-headed dog stood triumphant and glaring towards the reader, just as vivid as the one that had raided the city beforehand.
This time, her hands wavered over another name: Hades, God of Death, God of the Underworld, the frightening man in the picture. Again, her fingers blocked out the first two letters, leaving behind only three: Des. "You wouldn't remember, because when you took a mortal form ten years ago, you forgot who you are."
Persy bit her lip, then turned the page again, depicting the dark-haired man in a throne room, the same woman beside him on an adjacent throne, a dark circlet encompassing her mass of now-dark hair. "Now, would you believe me if I told you that you're over three-thousand years old?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 6:03 am
Des felt cold. Cold like someone had packed him in snow. Cold like someone had poured freezing water over him. Cold like his heart had been turned, by some otherworldly enchantment, to ice. He gripped the arm of the couch, afraid that without it he would simply fall off.
Coming from anyone else, he wouldn't have believed this explanation of his origins. Coming from Persy - Persephone - he had to. There was the three-headed dog that had obeyed him like a faithful hound to its long-time master. Jaw quivering, he nodded.
"I'd believe you," he said. His lips were dry. His mouth felt like cotton.
He didn't know what she'd been expecting. Maybe she'd been hoping she could make him remember somehow. Maybe she'd wished she could guilt him for everything he'd ever done. Whatever she had wanted, it hadn't happened. The memories remained as distant as ever, if not moreso. Even if she said that was who he was, it didn't make that past any more real. He was Des Thanos, floral assistant, unlucky in love and botany. Not Hades, immortal lord of the underworld.
"But it doesn't make me remember," he said, solemnly. He just didn't see any connection between himself and the gaunt man on the chariot. Dark hair and a mutual love of Persy... and that was all there was. As much sense as it made, there were his memories from ten years ago. His first days in the city, a young man who might as well had just flown in from Mars he was so confused. Ten years ago... and then nothing. Nothing at all. Only fog and swirling mists.
"What happened?" he asked.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:20 pm
Persy looked away, twiddling her thumbs. Somehow, she felt the story would be easier to tell if she couldn't see his expression.
"I didn't want to go to the Underworld anymore. I hated abandoning the Earth every winter and descending into Hell, just to pay my respects to a husband I hated. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I begged Zeus to lessen the sentence, strike a bargain, do something, anything. But he couldn't cut a deal with Hades...you...so I got desperate.
"I found a loophole in the agreement, or at least I thought I had: I figured, as long as I was mortal, Hades...uh, you...wouldn't force me to come back. So, I fashioned myself to a mortal vassel, and it worked, so that's how I came to get to the City. I kept a low profile, sold flowers...it worked, for a while.
"But making myself mortal was tricky, and it took a lot of research. Research that, somehow, you got a hold of. And, of course, you weren't happy with being denied your wife." Persy's lips pursed, and she glared at an invisible point in the carpeting. "So you tried to follow my footsteps, and it worked...sort of. Your mortal vassel forgot everything...except your wife, apparently."
It was only then that she could manage to look him in the eyes, searching for what he was thinking about. She then, in a very un-Persy-like manner, bit her lip and turned away again. "Except, over the years, my essence has seeped into the body, hence the flowery hair, and your essence has actually started to drag me to the Underworld, like before. In lamens terms, I've been dying since winter started." She looked down at her hands, pale and feeble, and wondered how dead her expression looked then.
"It's happened to you, too: you probably wouldn't remember this, but you didn't start out with pointy ears, either. The both of us are starting to outlive our bodies...and, in all honesty, I don't know that things'll get better for spring. I could just keep dying until one day, it all ends." A grin took her expression for a moment, and she laughed morbidly. "Anubis is probably the only reason I'm alive as it is, and as soon as he needs to intervene elsewhere...well, I don't know." Now that Persy thought about it, being mortal was rather nervewracking. She was only going to do this once, that was for sure.
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:36 am
Des wanted to recognize the story. He wanted it to feel familiar, to feel guilt, or indignant anger - anything that would tie him to it. He couldn't. Persy might as well have been talking about something entirely made up. It hadn't been him. Maybe, once, a really long time ago, it had been him, but not anymore. Even if that was what lay behind the mist, it wasn't jogging anything. No phantom memories loomed forward.
He felt sad for her. This Hades character had might as well been someone entirely else, but Persy was real. Persy was his friend. He had worried about her all winter long, tried everything to make her better, and... it was his fault.
"I'm sorry," he choked out. "I'm sorry. I don't remember any of it, but I'm sorry."
He reached out then and hugged her, like maybe, just maybe, since he was lord over death he could stop it from taking her.
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:46 pm
Persy found herself bewildered by the contact, frozen where she sat by the arms wrapped around her. At first, she seemed fearful. This was Hades, lord of the Underworld, whom she'd spent countless years hiding from, attempting to escape him, and even beforehand in her plots. He'd kidnapped her, forced her into a marriage, and made most of her immortal life miserable.
And yet...he wasn't Hades. He was gentler, kinder, and genuinely was interested in her wellbeing. Des wouldn't kidnap her and force her into his apartment for three months of the year. He wouldn't keep her if it meant she was miserable, and, in all honesty, she was with him now because she knew she could trust him. That, and he made the best chicken noodle soup she'd ever had.
"...Thank you," she murmured, leaning into the embrace somewhat awkwardly. Then, she did something unprecendented, and weakly lifted her arms, resting them on his shoulders. Believe it or not, she was returning the hug. Persephone to Hades...no, Persy to Des. Time had made them different people.
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