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justasparkwritings · 3 years

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Codename Cupid: Chapter 23

Previous: Cricket & OT7, Return to Sender

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x OFC

Genre: Secret AgentAU, Government AgentAU, Angst, Some Fluff

Rating: PG15

Word Count: 4.7K

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of Consensual Sex

Summary: Black Panther & Codename Cupid meet, Golden Maknae & Black Panther attempt to find a solution

What happens when you're confronted with an undeniable lie you've been telling for nearly a year?

(like ... it’s hella long and I only love like... part of it)

Codename Black Panther Meets Codename Cupid

Present Day

It’s awkward, sitting in your office knowing a team of high level, highly intelligent men sit no more than a block away, surveying your every move. Taehyung and Jimin are in their truck, the bugs they’d planted months ago still in use, their sight line into my office unobstructed. So what do you do when you’re under surveillance? No more rapping Childish Gambino at the top of my lungs, no more dancing to ABBA when I’m tired of sitting… No more pretending to work and billing hours when I’m reading conspiracy theory blogs. No more making out with Jungkook when he stops by or whispering filth into his ear when our temperatures are escalating and the need for each other surpasses the need for air.

I have to remind myself what the most important aspect of being under surveillance is: Act like you aren’t.

Cupid enters my office in what I can only describe as a knockout outfit, head to toe Chanel, complete with a Birkin and what I can only assume are Hermes sunglasses. She looks stunning, more so than usual.

“Euna, so good to see you,” I say, gesturing for her to sit. She glances at the chair and shakes her head.

“For how much I pay you, you should be able to afford nicer furniture,” She hums.

“Can I get you a water?” I ask, the anger attempting to pull my smile from my lips.

“Please, Pellegrino?”

“Yes, lemon and regular,” I inform her.

“Lemon please,” She says. Cupid takes her sunglasses off and waits patiently for me to return.

“We have a few updates to discuss,” I tell her. “I have done a little more research on the –

“I came here to tell you that I will no longer be needing your service,” Cupid interrupts.

“I’m sorry, have I done something?” I ask, surprise willingly seeping through my features. “I know we had a tense conversation the last time you stopped by, but I didn’t think you wanted me to stop my work.”

“I have done some digging on my own and have come to the conclusion that it’s incredibly unprofessional of you to engage with Jeon Jungkook in a manner that is far more than casual lovers. He is not who he says he is, and I will not have you investigating your own boyfriend.”

“Euna, how do you know?”

“I have my sources,”

“I thought I was your source,” I counter.

“You are,”

“Then, who else are you working with?” I ask again.

“That is not for you to know,”

“Okay, but you are clearly mad at me, or frustrated with me, specifically regarding my love life, which is not up for discussion. I want to fix whatever is causing this, but I can’t do that if you don’t tell me.” My voice reaches the gravel pit my Speech Therapist told me is unhealthy, ravaging my vocal cords. I can’t tell what her end game is, but I know mine.

“I do not feel comfortable with him being near my family and being with you means he is. I won’t associate with someone so…,” Cupid scolds me, unable to finish her thought. “Further, I believe you have gone above and beyond what I initially requested, and I am satisfied with the work you have done.”

“Why is my relationship with Jungkook so-

“You have love in your eyes,” She says. I gnaw at the dead skin of my bottom lip. “You are no longer leading this investigation with a clear head, and I need someone whose mind isn’t filled with hope to get to the bottom of this. However he knows them, Jeon Jungkook is dangerous.”

“If you tell me, I can ensure he isn’t. We’ve been together for a while, Euna, he isn’t, he isn’t whatever you think he is,” I could easily be lying, in this moment, I have no idea who Jungkook is.

“Be careful, Y/N, you do not know what they’re capable of.”

“Euna,” I start again. How does she know he knows them? What intel does she have that I so clearly do not? “What are they capable of?”

“You don’t want to find out. Here is your last check, bonus included for your exceptional work. I do have one request.” Cupid stands, slipping her shades back over chocolate eyes.

“Okay?” I ask, standing to mirror her.

“Burn it all,”

“Burn it?”

“Whatever documentation you have from my time working with you, it would be in your best interest to burn it,” Euna chooses her words carefully, a trait of being a CEO. I swallow thickly, nodding my head.

“Okay, and Euna?” I ask.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry this wasn’t everything you wanted it to be, and that I couldn’t find Yoongi,” I concede.

“Oh, don’t apologize. I would be a terrible businesswoman if this was the end of my plans.” Replacing her frown with a gentle smile, she walks towards the door. “When you see Min Yoongi, tell him I’ll be waiting.”

“What makes you think I’ll be seeing Min Yoongi?”

“Oh Y/N, I have a little faith.”

I watch her leave and decide that banging my head against a wall regarding what Cupid knows and I don’t is worthless. I guarantee Namjoon has another file waiting for me with all the answers to the questions he’s assuming I’m going to ask. He isn’t wrong, I do have a million questions, ones for Jungkook, ones for Namjoon, about nine million for Yoongi, and a few for Jimin. Yoongi was so smug, arrogant, rude, a complete ass hole. I hate him. But I also deeply respect his game. I also completely understand why Jun-Seo fell for Jimin, he is by far the most gorgeous man I have ever seen up close, next to Taehyung. And Jungkook. In person? Holy fuck, Park Jimin can fucking get it.

Speaking of the man in question, who is now a suspect to Euna, is waiting patiently for me when I come home. Jungkook’s not stalking in the darkness, slinking through the night to find me, catching me off guard once I close the front door. He’s silent in his approach, waiting patiently for me. But tonight, either in an effort to smooth things over or out of the pure goodness of his heart, he’s home. He’s got takeout waiting on the table, glasses of water and booze sitting in the appropriate places, necessary silverware set in place. This isn’t fucking Thanksgiving, it’s a goddamned Thursday night. He himself is waiting patiently on the couch, lying down, eyes closed and soft snores coming out of his mouth. He looks cozy in ripped jeans and a sweatshirt, his hair growing long again, bleached, a look I was thoroughly against until I laid eyes on him.

Walking. Sex.

That’s the only way I can describe him.

“Go home,” I purposefully slam the door, jolting him from his slumber.

“I am home,” He responds.

“I can’t do this with you,”

“We need to talk,” he sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk right now, JK, I want to go to sleep,”

“JK?” His eyebrows raise to say hello to his hairline.

“Yes, I don’t want to talk, go home.”

“Cricket, you haven’t eaten dinner yet,” He reminds me.

I can feel the tears prickling again, the ones I’d shed in front of OT7, the ones I’d born in the car, the ones I’d been bottling up for the last thirty-six hours, trying to not be so obviously heartbroken as I stared Lee Euna down. I’m too sad to fight him, so I don’t, letting him stand and guide me to the table where the Thai awaits. Dropping my bag down, I walk through to my bedroom, into the bathroom and shut the door.

“I’m showering first,” I call, ignoring the protest in his eyes as I walked away.

It’s a little too spot on to blast Adele, but I don’t fucking care. I turn it as loudly as my neighbors will tolerate and sing my sorrows. Tears mixing with cleanser, the poetry of their juxtaposition not lost as Adele fades into Ben Platt, and I’m sobbing as I release the words, noticing the magnitude of the change of phrase:

Now my heart is in your hands, please don't give it up / This is not a temporary love / This is not a temporary love / No, this is not a temporary love / Now your heart is in my hands, please don't give it up

I know Jungkook will be waiting for me to finish showering, and I know he’ll be ready to listen. He’ll beat himself up over whatever I say, he’ll listen when my voice raises, when it cracks, when it shakes. He always does. I guess that’s the thing about Jungkook, no matter how inexperienced he feels about loving someone, taking care of them, supporting them, he always does it and does it well. He shows up, even when he feels like he can’t. It’s been over a year, never once have I doubted his dedication, his steadfast love, not when he walked into the meeting with OT7, or when he tried to follow me after, or in the voicemails and texts he’s left since. I’ve never doubted Jungkook.

I shuffle from the warmth of my bathroom towards the kitchen table, where Jungkook is sitting.

“I reheated your plate,” Jungkook says. He’s sitting quietly, eyes full and downcast.

“Thanks,”

“Do you want to eat then talk, or talk first?” He offers the two options, knowing which I’ll pick.

“Eat,” I sit across from him, noting how he placed my food as far from him as possible, a notable decision that not only highlights how deeply he knows me, but that he still fucking cares. “You ate already?”

“I, yeah, I couldn’t wait,” He’s shy, a blush on his cheeks.

“Why? You always wait,”

“I’ve been on a small mission for the last twenty-four hours, no food, and I’ve been so anxious about us that I just… Seeing you just made all that stress disappear, so I ate,” Jungkook tells me. He sniffles, his tears starting to fall.

“A small mission?”

“Mm, to find out what happened to Bow and Arrow in 2012 and 2014 respectively,” He answers.

“Did you find out?”

“Yeah, but, well, you haven’t been onboarded. But one of our rules is that you don’t discuss work outside of headquarters,”

“Right, sure, makes sense,” I nod. I glance at him again, nose red, tears still falling. “I can’t eat if you’re crying.”

“I’ll sit on the couch,” He stands and shuffles towards the grey clothed piece I scrimped and saved for. It’s beyond worn out, pills of fabric piled on the edges of cushions, stains from mishaps and craft projects I should’ve done at the table. It’s housed many naps and a few guests. Jungkook looks nestled amongst the pillows.

I eat my food quietly, trying to figure out what it is exactly that I want to tell him. I’m not entirely sure I know what will come out of my mouth when I have to stare into his Bambi eyes. But I think I know what will come out of his, and I don’t want to hear it.

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook starts. The dishes are cleared, and he’s waiting patiently for me on the couch. I don’t sit down, just stare at the spot above his head.

“How long have you known?” It’s better to just rip the bandage off, right?

“Four months,” Jungkook answers.

“How long have you known Jimin?”

“Eight years. How long have you known about my connection to Jimin and Taehyung?”

“A year,” I whisper. My sin seems far worse than his.

“A year?” Jungkook’s astonished. “You’re mad at me for a few months that were direct orders when you’ve been what, suspicious for a year?”

“You lied to me, fundamentally lied about who you are, I asked you for one fucking thing in this relationship, and you broke it.” I yell.

“Technically, you asked me two things, and I have followed through on both of those.” Why is his voice measured? Why doesn’t he yell when I yell?

“You lied!” My voice rises another octave, “What was your goal, to perpetuate the lie for as long as possible?”

“I had a job-

“I had a job!” I counter.

“My job requires me to do certain things without asking,” Jungkook’s tears continue to fall. “I asked if I could tell you, and I told you what I could.”

“You spied on me, gave all my evidence and –

“I didn’t spy on you,” His teeth are gritted, bunny smile lost to the nasty snare he’s tightened across his lips.

“Your friends spied on me,” I correct myself.

“You spied on my friends!” Jungkook countered.

“Your friends? The men that until two days ago I didn’t know were part of a giant governmental body that’s going to take down the largest conglomerate in the world? Who even are they? Who the fuck do they work for? What the fuck do they even do? I didn’t know you could be a secret organization without like, the federal government or Interpol knowing who you are but to my surprise, you can!”

Jungkook rolls his eyes, it’s aggressive and sharp, seeing his entire brain as they roll. “I had to lie. You, you knew and didn’t say anything. Why not say something?”

I sigh, I can tell him why I didn’t say anything, but I can’t tell him why I didn’t say anything. You know?

“I had no real proof that you really knew them,” I begin, “all I had was a hunch, a reaction they had that made it seem like they knew you. I put a few pieces together, but I didn’t have any real evidence that would hold up in court or against your withering stare. And, what if you were dangerous? OT7 is dangerous, you all could’ve hurt me. Why couldn’t me hiding it be about my safety?”

“You’re grasping at straws. If you had thought I wasn’t safe to be with, you wouldn’t be here a year later.”

“Tell me this, Jungkook, why, in front of all of your best friends, did you fucking let Namjoon tear me to pieces? Why, Jungkook, did you not say anything when you were left off my list of romantic partners? Do they not know about us? Do they not know you, we, love each other? Is this not what I thought it was?” Ah, and there the tears are.

“I wanted to be off the list,” He whispers.

“Why Jungkook? From where I’m standing, it fucking feels like you’re trying your hardest to erase me, like, like this almost year and a half that we’ve been together means nothing because I’m just a god damn mark. Is that what I am? Have I been reduced to that?”

“No!” He stands and shakes his head repeatedly.

“Then who am I to you? Am I your girlfriend? Am I your best friend? Or am I a piece in a larger puzzle that you are trying to solve?” I demand, pausing minutely to gasp for air. “I know what you are to me, I know how I feel about you. All my feelings have done in the last year is grow. I love you more than I did last week, I care about you more deeply than I did when you told me about how you were raised, a slight lie, but still honest. I see us, our life together more clearly than I ever have, but two days ago I.” I let the tears fall, pulling my mascara, never waterproof, and eyeshadow down with them. “I looked like the fool. I was the little girl attempting to play dress up with the fucking Tony Award winning cast of Catch Me if You Can. So, if I’m not the butt of the joke to you, who the fuck am I Jungkook?”

He wipes his eyes on his sleeves, which have covered his hands and are balled beneath his fingers. I’ve never seen him this upset. I know I’m not prepared for what is going to come out of his mouth.

“Namjoon tells people that we’re the one who knocks, but we aren’t. We’re the ones who send in the team to knock, we call all the shots, gather all the data, work the case until it is made out of marble. There are no cracks unless we have intentionally left them. We work as a unit, I don’t breathe without Hoseok knowing. I don’t brush my hair without Jimin catching it. We exist because of each other.” He sighs, “I took myself off the list on purpose. Your existence in my life is a threat. People know who I am, and if they know you…”

He shakes his head, a flash of what I experienced a few weeks ago, the idea of not coming home to this, to us… It’s in his eyes and it’s breaking my heart.

“I know we can keep you safe. I have full faith that our team will always protect you, but if I’m on that list, if there’s a trail of me to you, or vice versa. We’re at risk. I cannot, and I will not, lose you. I will not let my work put your life at risk, I will not sacrifice myself if it means I won’t come home to you. At the end of the day, isn’t that our promise to each other? I love you, and I am so sorry I lied to you, but my hands were tied. I can’t step out of line without risking everything OT7 is and does. I won’t do it.”

“I’m not asking you to be a coward,” I whisper.

“What?” Jungkook asks, for the first time in a few days, his eyes are softening, confusion replacing hurt.

"In Charmed, Phoebe asks Cole to back down, and he responds by saying he would do anything for her, except be a coward. He begs, please don’t ask me to be. I’m not asking you to be a coward, Jungkook.”

“I know you’re not. I asked Namjoon if I could tell you, about my job,”

“I remember,”

“I didn’t give specifics about who you are. I didn’t tell OT7 because I didn’t want you to be used in this case, I didn’t want this to be happening. But I walked into the offices and there you were, your photo, your stats, your codename,” A shiver runs over my spine at the mention of a codename, something so intentional, deliberate, precise. They’d taken the time to include me. “I didn’t know that Jimin and Taehyung had been following you for months or had interacted with you. They asked me point blank and I couldn’t lie. I wouldn’t lie about you, you’re too important. Namjoon gave me orders, and I’m obligated to follow them.”

“You lied to me,” I repeat.

“You lied to me, too.”

I stare at him, I don’t know how to fix this.

“We don’t have to forgive each other, or understand one another or work through it, now or ever. But I think that would be a disservice, a betrayal, of our relationship. You did ask me who you are to me, and the best way to explain it is this,” He grabs a paper off the coffee table and hands it to me, “Namjoon had me write it down.”

Cautiously I take the paper from him, typed and unedited, it’s longer than I expected. “Is this a twisted love letter?”

“You could say that,” Jungkook’s soft smile returns.

“Read it to me,” I hand it back.

Sniffling, “I’ll keep crying,”

“Please?” I ask again, sitting on the couch. He nods gently and sits next to me.

“Can I hold your hand?” He asks. The flames have been handled, dulled to hot embers as we sit, thigh touching thigh, his tattooed covered hand engulfing mine.

“Y/N and I began dating after meeting in a bar. I was struck by how stunning she was, how much I wanted to understand the flush of her cheeks, the curve of her jaw, the cadence of her laugh. We flirted, and I bought her drink. That first night in her apartment, where I now spend almost all of my time, I was overwhelmed by how much it felt like home… which is insane and I’ve never told her, but that night, I could just see us there, our future, all enfolding in front of me... Her apartment doesn’t turn you away or disinvite you once you’ve arrived, it’s far too warm and cozy, just like her. It’s my favorite place in the world, she’s my favorite place.

We spent the night laughing, kissing, getting to know each other. It was something in her eyes, in the way she absentmindedly traced my tattoos, how she fell asleep so easily in my arms. The next morning, we got breakfast, and I asked her out for a date on Monday. Dinner and a movie, classic. She let me hold her hand, and skillfully argued why she should pay for dinner. I compromised, she bought the movie tickets and treats. I barely paid attention to the movie, I just wanted to watch her laugh. Since that night, she’s all I ever think about.

She said she wanted to know what she was going to drown in before she dove in, and I knew in that moment that I loved her. I’ve never heard such poetry spoken, let alone about me, to me, before… She just, she was vulnerable without hesitation. I didn’t understand how she could be so delicate with me, so exposed, so willing to let me in. Her vulnerability welcomed mine, embraced it, and I’ve been loving her ever since.

I’ve never loved someone quite like her. She is brash, she makes decisions and sticks with them regardless of how difficult they make her life. She works side projects for neighbors, unpaid, to ease their lives. The man she rents her office from has a few kids, and in the summers, she takes a day a week to watch them. She hates cooking and brushes her teeth for over the recommended time because she’s terrified they’ll rot. She buys packs of the same popsicles and never leaves without a full water bottle. She hates sports, would rather sit in silence and stare at a wall than watch a football game, but she’ll check up on the highlights if it matters to me. She listens to the same music on a loop and adds in songs I love to her playlists because she wants to feel close to me, to understand me, to see me.

I could continue listing all the things about her, that I love, or all the things I love about our relationship… how we compromise, how we talk through our squabbles, how we respect each other, how we can communicate without speaking but know each other’s voice is our favorite sound. I love that she’s perceptive and asks for alone time when she needs to recharge and can sense from the tone in my voice when I need the same. I love how she sees me, listens to me, brings out the parts of me only OT7 knows. Like I said, I could keep writing… but it’s easier to put it this way:

Y/N is the love of my life, and I will do anything to protect her, to love her, to come home to her every day and every night that she’ll have me.

I will not break my promise to her. Lock and key.”

Jungkook sets the paper down and doesn’t look at me. I’m openly balling next to him, sobs ripping through me in quick succession.

No one has ever loved me like this.

I’ve only dreamed of love like this, I mean, no one has this, right? He’s offering it to me, no strings attached, no secrets, love for the sake of love. Love without penance or an additional cost to it. Here he is, all ink and doe eyes, holding me, the woman who lied to him, deceived him, was suspicious of him for months, hoping he still holds that love for me.

“You’re just, you’re the love of my life,” I wail, hands still covering my face as snot gloms onto my palms.

“Cricket,” Jungkook wraps his arms around me as his tears fall onto my body. “I love you.”

“I’m sorry I lied, I’m sorry I kept it from you. I just, I didn’t know and I,”

“Shh, Cricket, it’s okay,”

“Bunny,” I say, “I’m sorry. I forgive you. You don’t have to forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” He tells me.

“You do?”

“Yes. I’ve watched every member of OT7 lose their relationships, be beaten up over a fake relationship with a mark, giving themselves to someone to have it crumble under direct orders. Jimin is still trying to unravel the Arrow if it all. I didn’t, I didn’t want work to ruin us.”

“You wouldn’t let it,” I assure him.

“I wouldn’t, but there’s always the threat,”

“Are you secretly more cunning than I give you credit for?”

“Absolutely,” He smirks.

“I missed you,” I whisper. Can he hear my heartache? We’ve never gone 36 hours apart… not since our first month or two dating. It’s horrible, I hate it.

“It hasn’t been two days,” His chuckle is light, a sniffle accompanying the sound.

“I know, I missed you though,” I nuzzle deeper into his side, my nose brushing his neck.

“I missed you too,”

“I don’t want to ever fight like that again,” I tell him.

“I can’t guarantee that we won’t,” He reaches his free arm around his torso, knitting his hands together, solidifying my body to him.

“Can you promise me something?” I ask.

“Yes,”

“I promise not to quote Runaway Bride in its entirety,” I start. “But I will still quote it,” I sit up, eyes swollen and red, finding focus on his marble cut features. “Promise me that when things get tough, when one or the both of us wants out, we’ll remember that we made it through this, and we can make it through anything.”

“Do you know in your heart that I’m the one for you?” He asks.

I hate that he leans into my vulnerability, that I’m unable to hide myself from him. I’ve never been able to, not the first night, and not now.

“I will regret it, every day of my life, if I don’t make you mine,” I recite.

“Promise me something,” Jungkook starts.

“The moon and the stars,” I tell him.

“That you won’t lie to me,” He says.

“I promise,” I stick my pinky out.

“You’ll come home to me, always,” He loops his with mine.

“I promise,” I kiss my right hand, he mimics the gesture. “Do you think, maybe we should –

“Move in?” He finishes. His gaze holds mine, all hope, no expectations.

“Yeah,” I nod.

“Yes, here?” It’s hard to imagine he was just crying, the excitement sweeping over his entire body as he stands up and shakes his fists.

“Is your lease up?” I laugh, he’s beyond cute.

“Fuck the lease,” He laughs coming back to the couch. His hands cup my cheeks, fingers gently pressing on my neck, thumb softly caressing my cheeks.

“Bunny?” I whisper, eyes flicking to his lips.

“Cricket,” He answers.

“Lock and key,”

“You and me,”

“You and me,” He leans forward, lips finally meeting. The anticipation of having him in my arms, the ache of his absence over the last day and a half, the unsteady calm of opening your heart to someone… it’s all there in how his lips move against mine, how his tongue gently passes my lips, how his hands move down my body. The opposite of hope is fear, the opposite of pain is joy, as we move together, bodies joining, sweat mixing and names said in pure ecstasy, Jungkook and I solidify what we’ve always known about each other and our relationship.

Lock and key, him and me.

Next: OT8

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therainbowwillow · 3 years

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When Hell Freezes Over AU: Part 4!

The whistle hasn’t blown for over a week now; Eurydice hasn’t worked. The temperatures have only dropped lower. Colder and colder until the rivers of the underworld had frozen over, all except the Phlegethon, where the shades spend all of their days conserving what little heat can be found at its banks.

Eurydice had joined the huddle as quickly as she could, staking down a spot as close to the river as possible. She’d brought with her everything she owned: the bottle given to her by the bartender, her thin bed sheets, and the scrap of paper with her name written on it.

She sits beside the fiery river, clutching her slip of paper. She knows its information is true now. The Lethe has frozen over, they say. It must have. Every day, she remembers a little more. First, her name, without her paper. His name. And losing him.

She wants to throw her shred of memory into the fire. Watch it burn. The paper’s edges are charred from past attempts, but she can’t bring herself to watch it turn to ash.

Of course he’d turned. She wishes she could blame him. Watch his name go up in flames. She wants to hate him. But would she have done anything differently? She had abandoned him, lost faith in his music. She’d broken her promises, he’d broken his. How could she accuse him of betrayal when she had left him first?

Why had she come here? Hadn’t she known the weather would never spare her, no matter where she ran? Her broken promises hadn’t brought her peace. The winds had caught up to her, even in death. For this, she has only herself to blame. He turned, but she gave him reason to distrust her.

A murmur goes up through the crowd: Persephone’s home. Early. Eurydice hears it. She does not remember how long it had been since the Queen of the Underworld had gone to the surface. It holds no meaning to Eurydice. Spring won��t be found down here, no matter how early Persephone arrives.

It’s the next rumor that catches her. “Hades is coming,” they say. She tightens her blankets around her shoulders, trains her eyes on the river. “He’s looking for someone.” She crumples her paper and tucks it into her pockets. “A girl. Eurydice.” Her hair stands on end. Her feet beg her to run. Flee, hide, pray she can stay out of sight. But there’s no dodging Hades’s watchful eye.

Eurydice hears footsteps, slowly approaching her claim on the riverbank. She keeps her head down. If he spots her... “You.” She recognizes Hades’s gravelly voice. She feels a hand on her shoulder and doesn’t look up, forcing herself instead to hide her fear.

“Get up.” She rises to her feet. “Let’s go,” he growls.

Eurydice follows Hades as he leads her away from the river bank, finally gathering the courage to speak up as they enter the heart of Hadestown. “Where are you sending me?” she asks, keeping her voice non-confrontational to mask her fright. There are worse places in Hadestown than the factories, if rumors are to be trusted.

“Home,” he responds, bitterly.

“Lord Hades, I reside in the east district,” she reminds him. “This is the wrong direction.”

He makes a sound of acknowledgement but does not change his course. Anxiously, Eurydice continues to let him guide her. For all of her months in Hadestown, the city may as well be new to her. Its perfect grid of streets is a labyrinth, impossible to navigate. Every building looks the same as the last, every street is a copy of the next. If she loses him, she may as well give up any hope of getting back to anywhere recognizable.

Finally, the path ahead begins to look familiar. The railroad. A woman beckons to them to hurry. Hades hastens his pace. They arrive at the train station, where Eurydice had arrived so long ago. Persephone stands waiting. “Eurydice.” The Queen of the Underworld pulls her into a tight embrace. “It’s been too long.”

“How long?” Eurydice asks, monotone. It’s colder here on the railroad track. Much colder.

Persephone frees Eurydice from her hug and looks the young woman up and down. “What’d he tell you, hon?” she asks, noticing Eurydice’s anxiety.

Eurydice shrugs. “”Home. That’s all he said.” She doesn’t trust herself to say more, the lump in her throat only growing.

“Home,” Persephone repeats. “That’s it? Hades, don’t you think you could’ve been a little clearer?” She glares at her husband. “Home on the surface, Eurydice.”

She draws in a little breath. “Orpheus?”

Persephone sighs and chews at her lip. “Mm hm.”

“What is it?” she asks, alarmed. “Is he alright?”

“I’ll explain on the way. Hades, you’ll handle things down here?” He nods. Persephone steps onto the train, offering Eurydice a hand. “I’ll be back before you know it, lover,” she reminds her husband.

Eurydice takes a seat in the nearest booth, her legs trembling. “Persephone?”

“I’m sorry, hon. I would’ve explained more if I’d had the chance. I expected my husband to...” She snorts. “Okay, no, I didn’t.” Eurydice’s expression doesn’t change. Persephone gives something of a half laugh, to fill the silence. She goes on: “He loves you, that Orpheus. More than anything. I want you to know that. No matter what happens up there, he loves you.”

Eurydice swallows, forcing back her terror. “Why are you telling me this?”

“He misses you.”

Unable to contain herself any longer, she raises her voice. “Take me back. I don’t want to see him.” She carries on, unsure what spurs her outburst. “Winter is here. His song’s a failure.”

Persephone looks at her with an unreadable expression.

“That song... it’s no failure.” It’s Hermes who speaks up from the far corner of the train car.

“Not a failure?” Eurydice snaps, forgetting herself as a mortal, disposable to these eternal beings. One word to Hades and she’d face a punishment far worse than the factories. Still, she goes on, the slip of paper she’d long held on to quivering in her hand. “It’s colder than ever. Even Hadestown feels this winter. I don’t want to go back only to lose everything! He’s... he’s gone.” She crumples the paper in her hand and throws it to the ground.

Hermes retrieves it. “Do you know where you got this?” he inquires, gently.

“I don’t care,” she snarls.

“Orpheus folded it up like a flower. Just some old newspaper. You threw the rest to the fire, a last bit of kindling for warmth. But you didn’t dare to burn it all.”

She wipes her eyes, under the guise of brushing away loose hairs. “I should have,” she mutters.

He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t. You won’t.” She knows it’s true, but she can’t bring herself to admit it. “He needs you, Eurydice.”

“What do you want?” she inquires, sharply.

“He laments losing you,” Hermes informs her. “You’ll see him again.”

“Under what terms?” Her voice blunt and devoid of emotion, expecting some new impossible fight. A goal she’ll never reach.

Hermes sighs. “That you end this winter.”

“Then we may as well turn around,” she says, the defeat apparent in her tone.

“No. Eurydice,” he tells her, “Orpheus is the cause of this winter.”

She almost laughs. “How? He’s a miserable poet, missing his lover. Nothing more. Orpheus is no god.”

“When he sings, the world sings with him. The world feels with him. Listen.”

She falls silent. Over the sound of the wheels on their icy tracks, she hears a melody on the wind, sorrowful and heart-wrenching. It catches her breath in her chest. She turns away, hiding her tears.

“The world sees no light as long as he sings. Will you try to reach him?” He presses the slip of paper into her hands.

“Teach me the song,” she requests. “The old song.”

...

Orpheus has long since lost track of time. He cannot remember her name, the name of the one he sings this elegy for. She is faceless as she is torn from his arms again and again and again.

The world, he finds, tires of his mourning. They had found him, women, worshipers of Dionysus. First, they had asked him to stop, drunken pleads. Whether or not he had heard them, no one could say. Finally, they had brought their blades upon him, maddened and miserable by his endless lament.

He had hardly felt the sting of their knives at his flesh. And who were they to stop him? Orpheus had sung twice as loud. The winds heard him and, driven by the power of his melody, his attackers had been frozen solid.

Others had approached him, their faces blank before his unseeing eyes, blinded by the snow. They too had met cruel fates, fallen like flies, effortless. He had taken no pleasure in their deaths, nor despair in the harm he’d brought.

Only once had he felt anything at all. Not remorse, not joy. Recognition, perhaps. In some far-off world, he’d known this man, divinity flowing in his blood. Orpheus had seen ichor stain the snow gold when he had thrown the man backwards, preventing his approach. Unlike the mortals he had warded off, this man had woken from his daze and he had fled. Once, Orpheus had wished he hadn’t gone. By now, he’s nearly forgotten the encounter.

His song simply washes away all concept of memory or hunger or cold. All he knows is his faceless lover, torn away from him. He holds her now, pleading to keep her. With each failed attempt, she seems more featureless. She stays in his arms for shorter and shorter seconds before she fades to dust once more.

He has no name to call to her before she’s gone. It is a nightmare and just as he wakes, he’s thrown back to relive it all over again. Yet he longs for her. He longs to see her again, just for a second. So he sings. As long as his melody rings in the air, he hopes she will be there. Another second. Another minute. Another day. He sees her. Again and again and again.

(Wow, I actually really like how this turned out! Usually I’m kinda meh about the writing of these fic parts, it’s more about the plot than the shiny words, but I quite like how this reads!)

#when hell freezes over au #hadestown au #hadestown #therainbowwrites

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kenzierose53 · 4 years

Text

Haunted

The next part of the Dynasty AU is finally here! Things have been so crazy lately with me planning my future and having a few exams back to back but I am free this weekend. I should be able to write a few more parts this weekend so I can start posting them more during the week!

Summary: Here is our first look at how Orpheus is handling school! The poet is haunted by images of the girl he left behind.

-MaKenzie ♥️

--------------------------------------------

He sat at the little cafe captivated by the falling rain outside. The pen that was gliding across the paper moments ago was forgotten. The steady beat from the rain distracting the working poet, the stormy grey of the sky reminding him of the girl he left behind.

Every day Orpheus wonders how she is doing. He wonders what she is doing, what she is thinking. Mainly he worries if he drove her to go back to the darkness. Nightmares of her broken state plagued his dreams every night. He saw her crouched in the corner, sobbing all alone to deal with the demons in her mind. He tried to scream for her but she couldn't hear until she looked up at him and whispered that this was his fault.

This image, this blame haunts him every day. He should be having a great time here at college, learning new things and making new friends but he can’t. All he wants is to go home and see her. He wants to go home and bring her back with him. He wants her.

He remembers when he first met her, the girl who was broken. Her beauty struck him instantly, leaving him breathless. He had never seen anyone as beautiful as her before...in fact, he had never even seen her before.

While the town he grew up in was not small per se, he went to school with the same kids since kindergarten. He was always super kind to everyone but he never made a real friend. He was always surrounded by people who were kind to him but he always felt alone. It wasn’t until he saw her that he felt something inside he never felt before.

He stumbled up to the girl with her head down, hand scribbling furiously across the page. She kept her head down completely ignoring his existence. Orpheus plopped himself down in the chair across from her causing her to freeze instantly. When he saw the defense, broken look deep in her eyes he knew he met his person. From that moment he knew that he was going to spend forever making this girl happy. Even at this moment, he fell in love, even though he didn’t realize it yet.

This poor poet has been in love with Eurydice since the moment that he saw her. She’s constantly on his mind, not that he complains. Her laugh is his favorite sound, her smile is his favorite thing to see. He was head over heels for a girl who he believed would never love him back.

His mind wandered to what he wanted his future to be. She was there with him, hands connected as they strolled through the park through town. The matching rings glistening in the warm summer sun. Eurydice’s free hand rested on her swelling stomach, a beaming smile on her face. Orpheus never felt so fulfilled as he did at this moment.

The sound of his name being called brought him out of his daydream. The feeling of fulfillment was instantly replaced with emptiness. The only feeling of warmth he got was from the steaming cup of tea in his hands. He barely knew who he was anymore. He used to be so full of life, optimism but now he’s just dull. He chose to leave his light behind for four years, for what? To get a degree he may never use?

He stared down at the notebook on the table. Her name was mindlessly scrawled across paper multiple times, she was part of his soul. He pulled out his phone staring at the picture of her. Her smile instantly lifted his spirits for a second. He itched to see that smile in real life again. He wanted to hear her smile again. He wanted to hold her close to him again. He wanted her again.

Was coming to school really the best choice for him? Higher education was something he always dreamed of doing when he was little. His mother and Hermes used to tell him stories about how much fun they had in college. Orpheus always loved to learn as well so seeking higher education seemed like a dream to him.

The moment he met her though, that dream changed, his dream changed to a future with her. He wanted to take her to school with him so they could continue to grow. He was so blinded by his dreams reality slipped right past him and he left her in the darkness. If he had been able to see the real world then maybe he would have not come.

Hermes had been adamant in making sure that Orpheus continued to follow this dream. He knew that the poet was in love with Eurydice but also in love with the thought of school. It was tough for Hermes to push the young boy away from the girl. Hermes had started to care deeply for the young girl but he knew that she would not be able to go to school with Orpheus.

The poet could feel his eyes start to water slightly the longer he stared at the girl he loved. He quickly shoved his notebook in his bag before running out into the rain. The rain provided a veil that allowed him to shed the tears that he was holding in. The weather around him matched his dark feelings.

He was shivering by the time that he reached his small apartment. The warmth hit him instantly the moment he opened the door but he still felt chilled to the bone. Quickly he changed out of his sopping wet clothes before flopping on his bed in pajamas. He sat there silently letting the tears continue to fall, the image of her running through his mind.

The poor boy was so lost in his own world that he almost missed his ringing phone. The rich voice of his godfather brought a sense of comfort to the distressed poet. “I had a feeling you needed me.” Hermes always had a “sixth sense” for knowing when something was wrong with Orpheus. He was cleaning the bar when he felt a nagging feeling in his heart that his godson was hurting.

Without saying anything the old man could tell that Orpheus had been crying from the sniffles. Hearing the voice of the man who raised him made him miss home. “Hermes,” Orpheus whispered, hushing the rambling man. “I don’t think that coming here was the best decision.”

By this point, Orpheus had cocooned himself in the blankets wanting to feel like someone was holding him. “What do you mean boy?” Hermes had a feeling he knew what the boy was talking about. “You have wanted to go to school since you were a little boy, it was always your dream,” Hermes tried to keep his voice uplifted. He knew that if his voice dropped any Orpheus would feed into the sadness and only get worse.

“That used to be my dream,” Orpheus’ tone came out somewhat bitter. In the corner of his room, he could see the ghost of the girl he left behind. She stood there looking at him with tears in her eyes. He wanted nothing more than to run into her arms but she wasn’t really there, this ghost of her haunting him. “I left her behind Hermes. She’s haunting me. I see her everywhere I go, she’s hurting and I left her behind! I just want her now, she’s my dream.”

The ghost of her faded away reminding him that she’s gone. “Orpheus she is doing okay. I saw her the other day,” Hermes tried to keep this tone level even though he was lying. Hermes did see the girl the other day but she was not doing well. She came to the bar, completely avoiding eye contact with him. He watched the poor girl drown her sorrows in alcohol.

Hermes was truly concerned for the girl but he also didn’t want Orpheus to give up school. “I promise you I am keeping an eye on her for you. She’s very happy for you.” It hurt Hermes’ heart to continue this facade with someone he saw as his son. If he told Orpheus the truth the poet would take the next train home and never leave her side.

Orpheus should have felt happy with this information. Hermes said she was happy, that she was okay but he still doubted this. She wouldn’t be haunting him if she was okay right? Or maybe he’s just not okay, maybe he needs her more than he thought. She was the ghost in the corner of his room, watching him succeed from the shadows while she struggled at home.

#dynasty au #orpheus #orpheus and eurydice #orphydice #hadestown #hadestown broadway #hadestown fanfic #haunted

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museswithinx · 4 years

Note

“ it’s okay to be angry, you’re allowed to be upset about what happened to you. ” { Hermes for Sienna, just gonna leave this here lol }

misc prompts for your feels

It was funny. With the veil still healing, the dead were temporarily allowed to mingle within the living world. Sienna could see anyone, go anywhere, do anything, yet she found herself here. Among the Mikaelson’s; watching from a distance as they celebrated some good fortune or other. So much for the idea of karma. It didn’t matter how much chaos and destruction they brought among others. Somehow they always came out on top of it all.

Sensing the presence of another, Sienna turns briefly to see who had caught her lurking about. Not a Mikaelson to her relief. It was no one she recognized, so she eases up and turns her attention back to the happy family before her. “It is so true what they say. About life not being fair,” she muses to this stranger if he cared to listen, “these people can torture and murder and ruin whole families, yet they’re rewarded. One gets a kingdom, another marriage, and the worst of them, blessed with a baby. If I walked up to him right now, I doubt he’d even remember who I was or that he’d been the one to cut my life short.”

“ it’s okay to be angry, you’re allowed to be upset about what happened to you. ”

“Is it?” She retorts a little quietly, tears prickling her eyes as she finally turns to face this man who she was pouring her sorrows to. “Anger is what made a monster of my husband. It grew and it festered until he one day snapped. Swapped out his spellbook for immortality and then spent centuries pursuing empty revenge. I no longer recognize him cause he is no longer the man I married so long ago. In a way, he died with me.”

As her lip wobbles thinking about him, Sienna brushed away the water under her eyes as she took a breath. “I do not wish to be angry anymore, truth be told. But I see them there, smiling and laughing with happy futures ahead for them, and I can’t help but feel it. There is no justice and that is what makes me most angry.”

#sirenmother #( npc ; sienna de marco )#( sienna & hermes tag ; )#misc prompts for your feels meme #answered

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half-bloodxresources · 4 years

Text

Farewell

NO smut, per se, but close enough. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Persephone was adamant about leaving. She saw no logic in forcing her to live in the mortal realm if she was to return anyway, but Hades could not bear to look at her knowing he was the cause of all her troubles. Well, most of them. Demeter was, too, a nuisance in her daughter’s life. But Hades did not care about Demeter’s feelings nor pride. All she wanted was his queen to be well. And so she would be, even if it was not by his side.

The silent one and the goddess of spring spent the rest of the night in the royal chambers where music filled the room while the infernal fire illuminated every corner of it within different colors. The precious metals on the walls glistened against the purple flame. Persephone had calmed down, and Hades’ mood followed. Being in bed with her always seemed to do the trick. The moment their bodies touched, his sorrow and pain vanished.

The dead King placed a kiss on her forehead, causing Persephone to look up. Hades didn’t stop there. He showered her with soft kisses on her lovely features. Her nose, her cheeks, forehead, and lips. Her soft ones welcomed the cold lips of the Silent one. In mere seconds, Hades’ melted onto her, his kisses became somewhat urgent, but gentle still, afraid to make things worse. The god only wanted to be with her and show her that no matter what, she would always have his heart in her hands. The Dark Lord of the Underworld was hers, for the rest of his infinite life.

Kisses turned into caresses, as fabric pooled on the floor by the large bed. Hades’ lips examined every inch of the queen’s exposed skin, worshiping it like a goddess should be. Time seemed to slow down for Hades. He was making up for the time she would be gone. Something inside him begged her not to leave, but the god knew better. She needed better. As Hades’ hands stroke her fair skin with feather-like touches, his lips found hers, passionately kissing Persephone.

The king and queen of the underworld became one as lovers were destined. He firmly believed that Persephone was his one true love. No one had come close to her, nor made him feel like she did. Life had gained a new meaning; the sun was cold compared to her. The goddess had turned his world upside down for the better and he was indeed the luckiest god. Not even Tyche was this fortunate. Hades could not fathom how he lived for eons before Persephone. It was simply dull before her light came to brighten everything up.

-o-

Later that evening, the goddess of spring was fast asleep on their bed, but Hades’ could not afford to sleep. He wanted to take it all in, for their time was now limited. The king shifted the covers, framing her delicate body as he placed a gentle kiss on top of her head. He had to walk away for a moment, to make arrangements. The God-King summoned Hermes. The messenger of the gods was one of the few beings that had free access in and out of the underworld. His nephew was sent to bring Demeter to the doorway to the underworld.

The conversation would be difficult, with both Persephone and her mother. But this already was. How could one part from the one he loves, even for the best of reasons? If Hades could die, he would die of a broken heart.

The god went back to bed, his long cold arms reached to pull the goddess into his embrace. Hades closed his eyes, enjoying the moment for as long as he could. The Silent one did not have it in him to wake her just yet. She looked so peaceful, so happy in her sleep. He simply held her as she rested, her soft skin warming him up. Was it too late to call this off? He was having second thoughts, but Hades reminded himself that she was needed up there as much as she needed the sun and life.

Soon enough, Persephone woke up. He smiled as her bright eyes looked up at him. She knew something was wrong, for the sadness was visible on his godly features. It stung. They both knew their time was up. She would return to the world of the living while Hades stayed behind, desperate for their time together. She clung to him. No words were needed, saying goodbye made it all too real. And Hades knew it would not be forever, in a few months, she would be back and rejuvenated, ready for their time as kind and queen.

Hours later, Hades kissed her forehead and smiled. “It’s time, my love.” She whined softly and stirred, clinging onto him tighter before reluctantly pulling away. The gods dressed again and shared one last kiss before he walked her all the way to the mortal entrance to the underworld, where Demeter was already waiting for her. Hades did not leave his realm but watched as his queen returned to her mother. The darkness of the cave-like entrance resembled his mood. Everything became colder, darker now that Persephone had left the Underworld.

SEASON FINALE

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

#Hades #Persephone #greek myth #drabble

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ambutasmallhuman · 5 years

Text

New Battles

The old gods are not dead.

Their peak of glory is a fragment of the past, but like all legends, they do not belong to the time they were born into.

They belong to the world that remembers,

And no matter how sparse their believers,

They live on.

Perhaps they have been ushered into the corners of humanity,

Rather than the pedestals they once occupied,

But they are there.

And they are watching;

Listening;

Doing.

Hermes; once a messenger, always a messenger.

Except now,

Not for the immortals who sat on top of the world, but for the world they all reside in.

It’s an ugly place;

A land of despair and cruelty and heartbreak

And hate and sin and darkness,

But Hermes, his golden sandals now rusted,

His cheeks now sunken from centuries on the road

Spreads the message to all who need it-

For those who need it is everyone.

Hope is not gone,

He repeats.

Hope is never gone.

Often, the words fall on deaf ears- despair is skilled at blocking out the world

But sometimes-

Sometimes,

They hear.

They lift their heads for a second,

They peer out at the world from underneath heavy lashes,

Searching for the soul with a voice like hope,

And they nod.

That is all Hermes knows he is good for anymore.

That is the only message he needs to deliver.

Artemis, of the moon, of the wild, of the hunt.

Her first love stays constant;

For what change can a speck of green bring to a jewel in the sky?

But she is not someone who can love one thing-

And oh, how her two other great passions have warped with the time.

The wild is no longer what it once was:

The grass is no longer green,

And the forests no longer lush.

The beasts she once hunted and hunted alongside are but memories and imprints in hardened mud.

For them, Artemis wages a daily war.

She is a one woman army, and her defense is of the nature she so loves.

Now, her arrows are rarely aimed at the animals that still inhabit the woods-

And so rarely are they arrows anymore.

The modern era has churned out weapons of steel and ash,

And it is these that Artemis uses to hunt those who wish to hunt her and hers.

Ares, the warrior and the blood shedder,

Now fights a different war from the ones he once delighted in.

Because the wars of the modern day

Are not what they once were

Swords and armor and horses

Traded for guns and bombs and tanks

Battles of purpose and patriotism

Now meaningless, endless,

The means for destruction of this scale

Was never meant for human hands

Or cruel human minds.

This is the war that Ares wages:

He fights everyday,

Steel slashing, blood arcing,

Cutting down the allies he once fought alongside

But now they are robots,

Zombies for a cause they don’t know about,

A government they do not trust.

Ares, no longer bloodthirsty, no longer triumphant,

Urges an end to the war.

But war is no longer his domain.

Poseidon, ruler of the seas, lover of the oceans

Now presides over a polluted kingdom

His subjects are dead or dying

His castles of coral and seaweed

Are being drowned alive by the filth that the world above churns out

Endless is his sadness, his rage, his helplessness

For he should have seen this coming

Industry was never meant to be a gift to the god of the sea

Just a discreet poison

No one thought would kill until it did.

Waves still bob and bicker,

But their life is not so cheery;

With it bobs islands of plastic and waste

Slick with rainbows of black

Strung with clear plastic nets

That entrap and ensnare and murder the innocent

There is so little he can do-

For he is but one against the uncaring of many

But each and every day is spent working

In the protection of the home that he is slowly losing.

Hera, the eternal mother, the constant wife, the queen of a time long gone

Her people,

Those who look up to her and those who she watches over,

Have seen the change of a century.

Earned, through blood and tears and fists and passion,

Their rights,

Their lives,

Their freedom.

She, worn and tired,

Smiles,

For her people have never been so much.

Never have they had what they do now.

But where there are victors,

There are losers, and there are the spiteful,

And no matter how little these losers have truly lost,

They feel cheated

Out of something that was never theirs.

They will never be satisfied with less,

The way her people once had to be.

But they have never had to fight the battles

That her people did,

And so although she has lost her prime, her beauty, her queendom,

She holds on to her place,

If not for herself,

For those who look to her,

For the true capacity of a woman.

Apollo, ever bright, ever center, ever joyous,

Still lives and dies each day for his spot in the sun

For a shadow of the admiration,

The adoration,

The praise

He was once showered with.

But his audiences now don’t care for his tricks,

His songs, his eyes, his hair, his hands.

They don’t care for intangible beauty,

For fleeting glimmers,

They hand in crumpled bills for soiled needles,

Exchange smoking pipes in back allies,

Hide away in stalls of bathrooms to fill their veins

With false ecstasy.

They paste smiles on their face, they let loose their mind,

They close their eyes and they pretend

At happiness.

But he knows that they are not truly happy,

They haven’t known how to do so in a long time.

He wants them to look at him again,

Want them to beam at him again with sunshine in their hair and mist in their eyes,

But more than anything, he wants them to feel the truth of joy.

To free their minds from chemicals of pretense,

To leave behind their smokes and their powders and their juices.

To join him in the sun,

Where it is warm and real.

Aphrodite, worshipped for beauty, for passion,

Knows what love is.

She was born with it curling through her blood like sea foam,

With the taste of it on her tongue,

With the knowledge of its truth secure in her palms.

She knows love better than she will ever know herself,

And she knows that love comes in so many forms.

The love between a little girl and a little boy,

Destined for greater things, but not yet.

The love between a woman and her wife of twenty-nine years,

A happy ending come to fruition.

The love between a man who doesn’t know it yet, and the man he is to meet later that day,

Unexpected, but beautiful; always beautiful.

The love between the uncertain teen and their breezy, blossoming best friend,

A love not without consequences,

Not without hate,

Not with the judgement of those who think they deserve such an opinion,

But love,

Nonetheless.

Love has been distorted into a commodity to be controlled by the same people who control markets,

Who control the government,

And she seeks to right their misunderstandings.

She no longer has the leisure to play her twisted games of love,

For there are far more twisted forces at work against her.

She has young lovers to reassure,

And obstinate critics to critique.

Love is love is love, she says.

No one would know better than she does.

Athena, the wise, the knowing,

sees the world for what it is.

In shades of gray and platinum and gunmetal and steel,

Everchanging and subtle,

A far cry from the bars of black and white that media advertises it as.

She knows that there is no good and no bad,

No true wrong and no true right.

There is only objectivity and subjectivity,

Each beholder for themselves.

Truth is different for each person,

And no one platform, no one channel, no one being, no one organization

Reserves the right to say otherwise.

She holds this simple message close to her heart,

Spreads it as far as she can reach.

But the media, the government,

Has technology that enables their spindly fingers to reach further.

And although her knowledge is more absolute than theirs can fathom,

Their webs of lies and false truths

Are too far integrated into the current world.

It is all she can do now,

To open the eyes of the few people still willing

To see beyond the film of mass society,

To bring change with one voice at a time.

Hephaestus; a craftsman once worshipped for creativity

Finds no hint of his old domain in the world of industry.

The artists, the writers, the dreamers,

Have fallen to the fringe of society,

Their crafts lost to the gears and machines

Of a modern age,

Where assembly lines reign true

And creations are spared no second glances and no loving care.

It is these careers of steel and paper and ball-point pens,

That shape the status quo,

That grinds edges out through a cookie cutter

Into the shape of a worker.

There is conformity,

Or there is poverty.

Within these solid black lines, there is no room

For the creativity that Hephaestus so treasured.

There is no room for flowing lines or vivid colors or segments of dreams

There is only the reality of the workplace,

And for some, the few that Hephaestus can get to,

The quiet peace of home and creation,

And the tidbits of inspiration that flare through the smog.

The world, he argues,

May now run on machinery and evenness and guidelines,

But no efficiency will ever replace the capacities of a human mind.

Hades, robed in darkness and throned on death,

Is sick, and he is tired.

Tired of the mass destruction that opens his gates,

Tired of the empty gazes and protruding ribs,

Tired of the constant stream of the dead that envelop his kingdom

In grief and hate and sorrow

On a scale he has never seen before.

But most of all,

He is tired,

Not of the dead,

But of the living.

Of the letters,

The prayers,

The pleas,

Of the living who wish they were not living at all.

Never has he seen his rivers so full of blood,

Never has he seen his dreams so full of begging youth and the disillusioned.

Never has he been asked,

So frequently,

To bestow the kiss of death,

To those who can no longer bear the gift-

The penance-

Of living.

It is a shame, a monstrosity, a tragedy-

That the world above has become a place far worse

Than the one below,

And that was never his intention.

His domain was meant to be the realm of after,

Not the final destination.

With shaken, white, crumpled hands,

He rejects as many of the pleas as he can

Begs, as he never has before,

For them to reconsider.

But sometimes,

They are too stubborn and the world of the living too cruel

And they find their way down

To him instead.

In all his years,

He has never seen so many smiles when they see his face

And every one

Breaks his heart.

Dionysus, still never seen without a wineglass in hands,

Now sits on the sidelines,

Swishes the liquid within his glass,

And does not take a sip.

Instead, he watches as young and old alike

Stumble into his bars,

Fill their livers with the red and silver bubbles

Of forget,

And lean away from their every day selves.

Away from their true selves.

He does not join in,

Even when they begin to dance

And laugh

And sing and shriek and rejoice,

Because he sees through their pretenses,

Sees through their attempt at happiness.

He was once one of them,

You see,

Before he realized that the greatest demons

Are the ones within.

He knows that no matter how much

They drink or laugh or try,

There is no escaping their reality

And no escaping the truths.

And so he tips his wineglass in their direction,

Toats their joy

And grieves for the tears they cannot shed.

Zeus, strong-willed and brave-hearted,

Has come to realize

Over the course of thousands up thousands of years,

His mistakes.

He knows what he has done wrong,

Has reflected on the personal ambitions

He once put above the greater good

The selfish desires

He once put above his otherworldly duties.

His days are long past gone,

And his mistakes,

Forever etched in the unforgiving hands of time,

Are past fixing.

But he looks around at the millions of heartbeats that surround him,

And wish that they too,

Could have the time he’d needed

To rectify their wrongs.

He has learned that nothing is permanent

Not his glory,

Not his crown,

Not even his faults.

But they do not have his time nor his immortality

To ponder this.

They only have their tomorrows,

And he can only hope that they will use

Those precious days.

And perhaps most forgotten of all,

Forgotten even when those who shared her blood

Had their spotlights.

Is Hestia.

She sits at home,

Content with her fire,

Her clotheslines,

Her picture frames.

She is alone again,

As she so often is,

Left behind to protect the home that so many have forgone

In search of gold and glory.

Everyone wants something,

Everyone wants to be more than what they are and who they were,

And she encourages these desires,

With tokens of luck and soft smiles.

But for all that they dream and hope and pursue,

She wants them to remember that there is always a place for them to return to,

A home where they belong.

There is cruelty in the world,

Unjustice,

Inequality,

And although ambition is a hearty, wonderful thing,

So too,

Is home.

The world is not what it once was,

Pockmarked as it has become.

And the old gods,

Though not what they were before,

Have adapted to fight new battles,

Losing as they may be.

Hope is frightened and small,

Nature is being cut down with ruthless efficiency,

War has spiraled out of everyone’s control,

Oceans fill with murky waste and the scent of death,

Womens’ rights are being wrestled with in an endless game of tug-of-war,

Chemicals create false happiness and temporary relief,

Love is fastened beneath lock and key,

Truth is distorted through layers of looking glass,

Creativity is stifled beneath stainless steel and cookie-cutters,

Life is harder to bear than the loss of it,

Self-expression hides itself away,

And mistakes go unrectified as the days drag on.

Even the old gods are trying to save the new world,

But they are twelve,

And that is not enough.

#old gods #greek gods #gods #ares #athena #zeus #poseidon #hades #hephaestus #hera #hestia #aphrodite #apollo #artemis #dionysus #hermes #old gods are not dead

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dork-empress · 6 years

Text

Life, Love and Death--End

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 (here)

Read on Ao3

Persephone, Demeter, and Hades come up with a solution.

Hades waited patiently by Persephone’s bedside. She hadn’t woken up yet, but was breathing easier, and her color started to come back ever since she returned to the Underworld.

Hades watched her breath, stomach ascending and descending as she took in air. She looked peaceful. And still, Hades could only ask ‘why.’

The silence was broken as Hermes cleared his throat behind him. The young God didn’t like being so far in the underworld, Hades could tell, but as messenger, he did what he had to. “Um, I delivered your message to Lady Demeter,” he said, “But….um…”

“WHERE IS HE?!” A loud voice rang through the halls.

Hermes cleared his throat again, “She wanted to deliver her response herself.”

Hades nodded as they listened to the thundering footsteps close in. “Thank you, Hermes,” Hades said, respectfully, “You may go.”

Relieved, Hermes clicked his winged heels and flew away, just before Demeter stormed in. Hades kept his seat by Persephone’s side, watching as she took in the scene. She glared and sneered at him. “Out of my way,” she snapped, pushing him practically out of the chair as she went to hold Persephone’s hand.

Hades heard her make a tiny sob, no doubt feeling the chill of her daughter’s skin. “I don’t care about why,” she muttered, voice full of poison, “I know that already. I just want to know how to fix it.”

Hades sighed. It wasn’t like he expected her to be okay with this. “It cannot be.”

Demeter sobbed again, turning on him. “Not even I expected you to go this far, Hades,” she said, still clutching her daughter’s hand to her chest, as though she could warm it. “You proclaim to love her, and then you try to KILL her.”

“I did not,” he protested. She scoffed, “I’ve told you before, Demeter, I do not lie.”

“Your dog gave this to her,” She muttered, “YOU came and stole her. Again!”

“I know how this must appear,” Hades said, “And I don’t have all the answers as to how this happened. But I had no intention of ever harming Persephone. I only brought her here at all to save her life.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, “I can’t...I can’t believe you.”

Hades sighed, “If I meant to steal her away, why would I have messaged you?”

Demeter frowned, thinking. “Maybe so you can try and trick me,” she said, “Maybe so you can try and convince me to stop Zeus from smiting you into oblivion.”

“If Zeus wants to kill me, fine,” Hades said, “If the both of you want to cast me off into Tarturus and leave me to the will of the Furies, so be it. If you want to devise some punishment for me so that I never see a living soul again and am tortured for the rest of eternity then I will face that punishment willingly. There is nothing you can do to me that will make me regret saving her life, because I love her. I love her more than I have loved anything before. I love her more than most mortals love in their entire lifetimes. I love….I love her as much as you do.” Demeter stared at him, stunned at the passion in his words, more emotion than she had ever heard from him. He swallowed, shaking from his own emotions. “So do what you want to me. It changes nothing.”

There was a moment of silence as the siblings stared each other down, before they were interrupted by a low, slow chuckle. They both turned, hearts in their throats as they saw slits of green behind Persephone’s eyelids and a small smile turned on her lips. “I told you, mother,” she said softly, but in the quiet they could hear each word perfectly, “I told you he was different.”

Demeter collapsed to her knees by the side of the bed. “Persephone?” she whispered, tears in her voice, “Persephone, darling, can you hear me? How do you feel?”

“Wonderful,” Persephone said, “And...a little shaky. But mostly the first thing.” Hades took a half step forward, trying to give them space, but wanting...needing to be sure Persephone was all right. With his movement, her eyes flickered toward him. “You look terrible,” she said, teasing.

He couldn’t help his smile at that. “You look beautiful,” He said kindly.

Persephone’s smile widened and she turned back to her mother. “Hades is telling the truth, he didn’t bring me the pomegranate. That was my choice, and my choice alone.”

Demeter smiled, “Daughter...I know...you may THINK that, but--”

“I know it,” Persephone said her words final.

She told them the story of meeting Gaia, of what the goddess had told her, of the cycle of life and death. It was more than what Hades had been expecting, but...it made some kind of sense. Now if Demeter would only believe it…

Demeter’s brow creased as she listened to her daughter. For the life of him, Hades couldn’t read her expression. “Do you understand what you’ve done?” She asked, her voice low. Honestly, Hades had the same question.

Persephone nodded. “Yes. I do. You can’t keep me away from the Underworld anymore. I HAVE to stay.”

“But do you UNDERSTAND?!” Demeter demanded, “You….you can never return! Not to visit me, not to see the sun, the grass, the flowers….not….not ever!”

“Actually,” Hades interrupted, Demeter snapping her head over to him, “She only ate 6 seeds. It’s...it’s possible she could return, for part of the year at least.”

Demeter scowled, “How long?”

Hades sighed, thinking. “Maybe half of the year. Then she’d have to return.”

Demeter clutched her head in sorrow. “It’s all right, mother,” Persephone said, sitting up and taking her mother’s hand. “Listen you….you are life, blooming and blossoming….messy and chaotic, and beautiful.” Persephone reached her other hand out for Hades. Hesitantly, he stepped forward and took it. “You, my love, are death. Scary at first, but...peaceful, calm...everlasting and dependable.” She squeezed both their hands, “I am the bridge between you both. Between the dark winter...and the bright summer. Between the cold and the warmth. This is my duty, my domain, the one I have chosen for myself.” She smiled at them, “I hope to be as good at it as the both of you are with yours.”

Demeter choked up on her own sobs. “I just...I don’t want to lose you…” she muttered.

“You won’t,” Persephone said, “You won’t ever. I’m already going to be the only wife in all of Greece who has to share time with her mother.”

Something deep in Hades’ soul that hadn’t been sparked in very long months lit up like a beacon at the word ‘wife.’ Did she mean….could they really….

“You,” Demeter snarled turning on Hades. Hades took a step back, but Persephone held him steady, “If you hurt her….if you cause her distress or are unfaithful, or in anyway cause her pain….I will ensure that the suffering that comes to you is worse than anything caused by the Winter.”

Hades nodded, “Of course,” He said.

“You will take care of her,” Demeter said through her tears, “You...you work to make her happy.”

Hades nodded again, “Every day I will. I promise.”

Demeter wiped her eyes as best she could, still clutching onto Persephone’s hand. “Then,” she said, “we have someone we need to talk to.”

-----------------

“You’re telling me,” Zeus said, staring them both down, “That not only did you disobey my DIRECT order about seeing her, now you both are going to start another thrice-damned WINTER? Every YEAR?”

“There’s no alternative,” Hades said, facing Zeus, “Persephone needs to spend half of the year, every year, in the underworld to survive.”

“And the plants will need that time to rest so they can continue blooming when the warmth returns,” Demeter said, “According to Persephone, anyway.”

Zeus massaged his temples, shaking his head. “According to Pers...oh for Olympus’ sake…” He looked up at the both of them. “This is treasonous, you realize. Once I’ve given my word, it is final, it must be for it to mean anything.” Zeus stood, “Lord Hades for breaking my command, you must be punished. We’ll figure out something to do with the girl, but--”

“Oh would you be quiet?” A fourth voice said, entering the room.

Hades and Demeter instantly bowed their heads. “Sister Hera,” Hades greeted, “you are looking well.”

Hera sneered at him, walking into the room. “Don’t use flattery, Hades, it doesn’t come naturally to you.” She turned to her husband, “Just because they found a way to force your hand on this doesn’t give you the right to get all cranky. You know perfectly well you allowed this whole situation to get out of hand in the first place. Not to mention, it’s extraordinarily rich of you to criticize someone for breaking YOUR word, when we both know your word is worth less than a piece of wet donkey dung to you.”

Hades and Demeter tried to hide their shocked faces.. Zeus was not so successful, balking at her sharp words. “Hera…” he said through clenched teeth, “Can we please talk about this later?”

“No we cannot, it’s happening now, and so we’ll discuss this now,” She said, hands on her hips, “I warned you, I keep warning you that spreading your damn kids across the entirety of Greece is going to cause problems, but do you even listen to me? No! Of course not!”

Zeus grit his teeth, glaring down his wife. “Can we meet in private then?” He said, grimacing.

Hera assented and the pair went off on their own. Hades and Demeter exchanged exasperated glances. “Sometimes, I just think….there but for the fates go I…” Demeter murmured, watching the back of the King and Queen, “Thank mother I dodged THAT arrow.” Hades chuckled. “Are you sure you want to get married?”

He smiled, looking over at Zeus and Hera arguing. “Absolutely.”

Demeter nodded. “Good. That was a test.”

Eventually, Zeus and Hera made their way back. “In punishment for breaking my command,” Zeus said to Hades, “My order will stand. You will be forbidden from seeing Persephone…” Hades heart dropped, “...while she is on Earth. When she returns to the Underworld for her half of the year, you will be permitted to see her...and...should you wish...marry her.”

Hades lit up like a torch. “Thank you, kind Brother,” Hades said, bowing his head, “And to you, Sister,” He bowed to Hera as well.

Hera shrugged non-chalantly. “Well. I am the goddess of marriage, after all. Besides, if I could send all of his illicit WHELPS,” She bit the word out, making Zeus flinch, “down to the Underworld, I would.”

Demeter stared awkwardly at her feet, avoiding Hera’s eyes. Zeus sighed. “Well, I have to go prepare for another damn winter, apparently. Go, tell your bride the good news.”

Hades actually beamed, nodding. “Yes, my King.”

He all but ran out the door, leaving his siblings behind. “You know,” Hera said, watching him leave, “Our brother actually can be rather sweet sometimes.”

Demeter huffed. “I still don’t know what she sees in him.”

----------------------------

“Are you sure?” Demeter kept asking her, even as she helped her dress, “If you’re not, we can figure something out, seeds be damned.”

“Mother,” Persephone chastised, “I’ll be ok.” Truth be told, she was feeling a little off-kilter being away from the Underworld, but it was only for a short stretch.

Demeter took a deep breath. “Alright, Alright.” She pulled her into a tight hug. “See you in the spring.”

“In the spring,” Persephone agreed. She was the spring.

Demeter lowered Persephone’s veil, and Hera pulled her sister back, letting Persephone step onto the golden chariot. Hades had sent his own chariot to fetch her, the black horses knowing the way back to her home.

Demeter cried and cried until Persephone was out of sight. Persephone waved all the way, until the clouds covered her like a cold blanket and she was pulled off Olympus and below to the Earth.

The road was lonely, but beautiful. Every once in a while she’d encounter a mortal who would gasp and gape at the beautiful maiden being carried off on horses dark as night.

They watched as she passed, behind her the leaves on the trees turning from bright summer green to the golden colorful autumn array. Persephone smiled, looking up at the trees that showered her in colorful confetti. A wedding gift from her great grandmother, and she could practically hear Gaia laughing in the wind.

Soon, the chariot reached the mouth of the cave and plunged her into darkness. Persephone closed her eyes, remember the first gift that Hades had given her, the sight of the dead. She opened her eyes again….

...and was met with the most glorious sparkling beauty she’d ever beheld.

The path down to the Underworld was decorated in bright gemstones of every shape and hue, gold and silver glittering from the walls and guiding her, leading her to her home.

She was carried down to the river Styx. She remembered lying in the river bed her first several days there. On the river, Charon stood on his ferry, the ferry full of the dead coming in. Even for a wedding, people didn’t stop dying. Charon whispered something, and the dead all bowed to her.

Persephone realized they were bowing to their Queen.

At the gates, Cerberus could hardly keep himself still. He was clearly under orders not to lick her and ruin her wedding look, but was finding it a hard order to obey. Smiling beneath her veil, Persephone pulled on the reigns, getting the horses to slow for a moment. She reached out her hand, and gave a pet to each of the heads, before continuing on.

Entering the throne room, she found it more filled with life than it had ever been. Nearly all the major Gods were here, none daring to offend the Lord of the Underworld, with the exception of Demeter, who had sent her off from Olympus, and Hera, who despite being helpful would not ever attend a celebration for one of Zeus’ illicit children. Hestia smiled at her as she passed, whispering a “You look lovely.”

At the head of the room, Hades stood before the twin thrones. One would be Persephone’s, now until the end of time.

The rest of the ceremony was a bit of a blur, until the moment Hades lifted the veil from Persephone’s head. She looked up into his eyes that were sparkling with tears as he looked at her. Slowly, one fell down his cheek, landing with an audible ‘drip’ on the Underworld floor.

He took her face in his hands, bending to her. She in turn stood on her toes, still bare as they always were, and they kissed one another, a promise to one another in view of all the Gods.

Below their feet, from the point where Hades tear fell, dark grass grew and died immediately, the blades golden brown with haunting beauty. All around them, black roses with thorns as dangerous as they were beautiful decorated the once bare throne room.

The other Gods left as quickly as possible, none exactly relishing being in the Underworld, But Persephone and Hades didn’t mind. All they needed, all they ever needed, was each other.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many years later

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And don’t forget the flowers, I’ll need a bouquet of them from the field of Nysa delivered to her. Make sure to tell her how the Garden is doing, and that the pomegranates are flourishing this year. Oh! I almost forgot. Cerberus has learned a new trick, he’s been pretending to be dead. It’s actually quite disturbing, but he seems to enjoy it.”

“Lord Hades….” Hermes said, sounding tremendously put upon, “I’m...delighted...of course, to bring messages to your wife, but….I do have other deliveries I need to make….and….a life….” He spoke hesitantly and tiredly. Hades might have had sympathy for him. And yet, he didn’t.

Hades never thought of himself as scary. It’s not like he ever really did anything to anyone, not unless he really needed to. Still, just staring Hermes down was all he needed to intimidate the young God. “You know what?” Hermes said, putting his notes aside, “It’s really not much of a problem, I can do this quickly. So um. I’ll let you know what she says. Bye!”

With that, he was off, and Hades smirked to himself. The summer months were coming to a close, families were storing their harvests, and soon Winter would come. And with it, his beloved Persephone.

“Um, Lord Hades?” Hermes voice came from the next hall, “I think I have a delivery for you.”

Hades frowned, about to follow him out, but he was stopped in the doorway by a young woman. He had to blink at her a few times before recognizing her as, “Persephone?”

Persephone smiled, the same bright glorious smile she always had. “Hello, Husband.”

Not hesitating a moment longer, he lifted her in the air and spun her in his arms, causing her to shriek and giggle. “You’re early!” He exclaimed.

She giggled more, leaning down to kiss him. “There was a good harvest this year. The humans have all they need, so….thought they could use a little winter.”

He smiled, putting her down so he could kiss her again. “Welcome home,” He said.

He never cried when she was gone. He was sad, and he missed her, but in the Underworld, sorrow was hardly overwhelming enough to bring him to tears.

But joy...joy would overflow from Hades like a river washing away anything in its path.

He had cried on their wedding day (more than once, though he wouldn’t admit it.)

One day, he would cry when Persephone would send him a message from Hermes, telling him she had found out she was pregnant.

One day, he would cry, holding his first child (a daughter, as lovely as Persephone, but with hair like Hades, black as night) in his arms.

And he would cry like he was crying now, every single time Persephone returned to him.

Persephone, on the other hand, laughed, reaching up to wipe Hades’ tears away. “It’s good to be back.”

#greek mythology #Persephone #Hades #hades and persephone #fic #laura writes #tell me what ya think!

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phillyvoices-blog · 5 years

Text

The Whirlwind: In Conversation with Nico Meyering

“You don’t really have a choice about getting knocked down. You do have a choice between staying down or getting back up.”

The view from this height is breathtaking.

I’m meeting my interviewee for lunch at the University Club, a top-floor members-only restaurant and lounge for students, faculty, and staff of the University of Pennsylvania. I’m a PhD student there, enjoying the Club’s “first year of membership free” perk. And my interviewee is enjoying the large tables.

“Sorry bro, I like to spread out.” Nico Meyering grins sheepishly at me, running a hand through his blonde hair, a nervous habit he will repeat often during our time together. On the table are a spreadsheet, a notepad with some hasty scribbles, a smartphone he uses like a computer, a half-forgotten graphic novel, and a sparse lunch of sweet potato soup, two turkey burgers, and mixed vegetables that he keeps meaning to eat. The phone lights up with some sort of reply and Nico speaks into it, recommending a sleep study and a “trach downsize before decannulation” before adding that he isn’t a medical professional. I admit that I don’t know what any of those words mean.

Nico isn’t a medical professional but he IS a whirlwind.

I met Nico years ago when we were both graduate students at Binghamton University. I thought his energy and constant movement was just the result of too much coffee or the stress of final exams. But here, dressed semi-formally, he’s the same whirlwind from before. The first thing I learn about Nico is that he’s always moving. I’ll learn much more over our hour together.

Nico was born 31 years ago with a nervous system disorder called congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS). The most notable and life-threatening symptom is the body’s lack of an automatic impulse to breathe, which means people with CCHS need lifelong mechanical ventilation when they sleep. Some need around the clock venting. Other CCHS concerns may include eye/vision issues, speech delays, or digestion issues.

After Nico was born, his mother swung into action, finding other CCHS families and bringing them together to share stories, support one another, and eventually connect doctors to families. A few decades later, those ragtag families are now The CCHS Family Network, Inc., a federally-recognized nonprofit that funds research and raises tens of thousands of dollars for the roughly 1200 people worldwide living with this condition.

Nico has been ever-present; he shows me photos from each successive gathering. He rattles off his various duties: moderating the group’s Facebook presence, being a liaison between people with CCHS and their families, explaining CCHS to general audiences (his TED talk from December 2017, Dis-ABLE-d, has been viewed on YouTube over 500 times), and trying to mentor teens and preteens with the condition.

“We are ninety-nine percent just as healthy or normal as people who don’t have CCHS. We have hobbies and interests and pet peeves and everything. I keep telling people: CCHS is manageable when you stay on top of it. It’s not fatal. It’s not degenerative. We have equal or better life expectancy. We get married, we have jobs, we get stuck in traffic, everything.”

The second thing I learn about Nico is that he jokes as much as he moves: constantly. It’s possibly his humor that has kept him going; while CCHS isn’t fatal, it also isn’t trivial. Nico rattles off over a dozen names of friends he has lost to illnesses made worse by CCHS or to tragic mistakes like falling asleep off their vents. “It’s up to us, you know, to keep their names alive. We gotta keep telling their stories.” He says determinedly. Behind that determination, however, is a measure of sorrow: Nico has lost many friends and he admits that it’s difficult to find new ones. But when he feels like I’m asking too many questions about the sadness, anxiety, and risk of living with rare diseases, he noticeably steers the conversation to a happier topic.

“You don’t really have a choice about getting knocked down. You do have a choice between staying down or getting back up.” He points out, making rare eye contact with me.

At 31, most Americans are building resumes or families. Nico is helping to build a movement. His vision of the CCHS community is larger and more comprehensive than the original group that met once every few years.

“I think something every group needs to constantly work on is inclusion and evolution. Our group is no different. That’s why we had a paper newsletter for so many years and now we’re online. It’s why we were English-language only for a long time and now we have some volunteers who can translate for us. We began by talking mostly about physical health and medical issues, now we include mental health and social issues. Young adults with CCHS were the first people to begin discussing the emotional burden of life with a rare disorder.”

I ask him what else the CCHS Network needs to do.

“We need to keep raising money because that money goes right to funding CCHS research. We’re rare and we’re a small group, so nobody’s gonna save us. We save ourselves. We share research and medical articles on CCHS, but we also need to start dealing with practical questions. I mean, a young couple who find out their baby has this disability aren’t interested in medical articles right away. They need to know about trach care, venting options, and how to talk about CCHS with other people. Chances are that they’ll have to educate doctors and nurses about it all.”

Nico’s in-your-face advocacy didn’t come naturally. He wasn’t outspoken about disability issues and disability rights when I first knew him. He is an introvert and his family is private by nature; Nico thinks it took significant time for them to accept Nico speaking candidly about his disability. And while Binghamton-Nico is different from Philadelphia-Nico, the seeds of change were always there: his early championing of LGBT and mental health issues years ago influenced how he advocates for people with CCHS today. “Whether it’s gay rights or disability rights or any other issue, this is true: if you don’t talk about it there won’t be any progress. You make your own momentum.”

Part of Nico’s value as a patient advocate comes from the bonds he’s formed in progressive communities. He marched alongside Occupy Wall Street, handing out water bottles and band-aids to other protestors. He volunteered with a soup kitchen and still keeps in touch with the guests he served. When a local school district cut sex ed classes, Nico volunteered with a LGBT community center to talk about contraceptives and consent. He protested so much at city council meetings that he eventually got thrown out of Binghamton’s City Hall for promoting services for homeless people, something he still gets visibly annoyed about. Seven years later, though, the people that share his posts and donate to his CCHS fundraisers are those same people he spent so long helping. In the week since our interview I found myself back in Binghamton to see family, and almost everyone I talked to, from the city’s former Mayor Ryan to guests at Nico’s former soup kitchen, remember his name and deeds.

Nico cracks a grin when I mention my Binghamton visit. “The biggest thing I learned there is that you eventually need friends, allies, people in your corner. You can do a lot on your own, but you do more in a team. If we can work together to write a grant or help someone in need, then that’s what we’re gonna do. Eventually the CCHS Network will have to work with biotech or pharma companies to develop a cure, so it’s good practice.”

I ask him about partnerships the Network has formed already and he demurs, but he does offer some thoughts on rare disease partnerships in general: “I was at the Global Genes conference [for rare disease research] back in June, and I can tell you that most research hospitals and biotech companies recognize the need to work with patient advocacy groups. We are no longer ignored. There are maybe some researchers who think they can whip up a cure without patient involvement, but they’ll learn really fast that they need our input because without it they will go bankrupt.” He rubs his goatee briefly, “The market is real Darwinian like that.”

We pause so Nico can send an email to a CCHS family in Michigan. He signs off with an apology for replying so late. When I see his phone wallpaper it’s a woman with long black hair holding a long, black cat. He sees me looking and smiles. Nico is never short on words and each story is like a voyage.

He met Brittany online in April 2016. He noticed they were both AmeriCorps alumni and shared an interest in anime and Star Trek. At first he hesitated. He was unemployed and she mentioned wanting to eventually move to New York City. Nico was looking for a long-term relationship and she was only in the area to tend to an ill family member. But he took the time to send a few paragraphs and their first date was at a local Thai restaurant. The two now live together in Philadelphia, where she is a teacher and he is a financial administrator for a rare disease center. The couple got engaged in December and they share their apartment with three cats: Apollo, Hera, and Hermes.

“I dated some women for a year here and there, but we’d always break up whenever I finished school or moved states to take a new job. Brittany has really stuck with me.”

Nico claims to have been a nervous kid growing up, dealing with health concerns and wanting to fit in. Sometimes he’d descend into crying fits because he felt emotions too strongly, like a time when one or two misbehaving kids caused his entire class to miss recess.

“I think we get this message as kids, and this is especially true for boys I think, that emotions should be buried or that you handle difficult situations yourself. This is a bad message. It’s harmful. It took me a while to figure out that emotions and friends are strengths rather than weaknesses.”

I don’t see any trace of that nervous kid. Nico leans back in his chair, rubs his hand over stubble, peppers his sentences with “bro”, “dude”, and “man” regardless of gender, and fires off a quick message about different CCHS mutation types. To passerby, he is just a nerd reading a Spider-Man 2099 comic (he points out that it’s a different character than regular Spider-Man,) not one of the biggest names in a very small pond.

But why is he so busy? Why now? After living in a handful of different states and working tons of different jobs, Nico saw some patterns emerging for disabled youth. For one, he says, there’s a knowledge gap and a skills gap between the end of high school and becoming an established adult. The time you spend getting your health under control is time you can’t spend learning life skills. In fact, Nico reveals that he learned how to tie a tie and how to shave by watching YouTube videos.

“When I was on the job market, CCHS moms would always remind me ‘You need a job with good health insurance!’ They wouldn’t stop reminding me. I think they may believe it is easier to get a full-time job with benefits than it really is. Even if you have the schooling and the skills, it’s difficult. Even when you have insurance, it’s tough to understand it.”

So Nico made a checklist to help young adults and their families prepare for independent living. “It’s a conversation families need to have together. It’s not you versus your kid. It’s your whole family versus the problem.”

Other projects followed: a guide to seeking employment while disabled, a guide to CCHS care in schools, one-page factsheets about CCHS for families to give to doctors and nurses, a slew of public speaking appearances, mostly at comic conventions (his talk on disability representation in anime was rated the best panel at GeneriCon 2019, and he repeated the talk at Wizard World Philadelphia this summer.)

He talks animatedly about another idea: setting up a small fund to buy pulse oximeters and other vitals monitoring equipment. “Our bodies send signals that our brains don’t always catch, so we could be ill and not know it. If you have a machine that tells you your oxygen levels are low, that could be the difference between resting at home or exerting yourself and ending up hospitalized or worse. I haven’t fleshed this concept out yet though.”

He also wants to help people with CCHS explain the condition to others. “Stigma kills people and knowledge kills stigma. Our disability is nobody’s fault. It’s not contagious. We haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just the way it goes, dude.”

And he talks about money. Since being elected to the Board in 2015, Nico has worked hard to lead collaboratively and to consult others before taking action. It’s what led to his popular Dungeons and Dragons charity games, which raised several hundred dollars at the last CCHS conference. It’s what led to his “Faces of CCHS” project last November, which was shared on Facebook over one hundred times. His last fundraiser brought in several hundred more dollars.

“We need to make a difference AND get attention at the same time. Good cash flow lets charities steer their own ship; even $10 from a few people helps us go to rich people and say ‘Look, we have all these people participating. They believe in our cause. Will you believe too?”’ and then send them some cute baby photos. That’s a good pitch.” He smiles.

It’s clear Nico loves talking about CCHS and his work in disability issues, but getting to know the man behind the work is frustratingly difficult. I ask him about his hobbies like video games and hiking, but he says it’s difficult for him to find the time for those hobbies: “Sometimes I wish I could finally finish a game, but I don’t go ten minutes without needing to do something or reply to someone.” His lack of free time doesn’t seem to bother him. “Anyone can turn on a PS4. Anyone can read a good book. But not everyone can help a CCHS person or family in need. The work is the important thing here.”

Looking to the future, all Nico sees is hope, the word he has tattooed on his left arm. He plans on seeing a CCHS cure in his lifetime, he tells me. Until then, he’ll keep on making the CCHS journey easier for everyone.

“I think some parents are frightened when they realize their children are growing up in a very different world. And I think CCHS kids are scared by the responsibilities that come with being an independent CCHS adult. It’s less scary when you listen to each other and work together.”

#Nico Meyering #disability #cchs #congenital central hypoventilation syndrome #nonprofit #philadelphia

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sisterofiris · 7 years

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Hey what can you tell me about Prometheus? He seems like the good titan but doesn't really get as much recognition (other than shitty films named after him)

Hey anon! I’m sorry it took me so long to get to you.

First of all, there aren’t any “good” or “bad” Titans per se. Like any other divinities in Hellenic religion, Titans have their flaws and their virtues, and the fact they were displaced by the Olympians doesn’t change that. In fact, the Golden Age of the world, according to Hesiod’s Works and Days, happened during Cronos’ rule. Even after Zeus overthrew him, many Titans retained important roles - the Sun and Moon (Helios and Selene) are Titans, for example, and so is Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses.

Prometheus himself is a second generation Titan, the son of Japetus. He is most famous for three episodes:

The creation of humankind

The establishment of offerings

The theft of fire

Various Ancient Greek authors, among others Sappho and Plato, write that Prometheus (in some versions, with the help of his brother Epimetheus) created the first human beings from clay. This is a common motif in mythology - to take the most famous example, the Abrahamic God makes Adam from dust. (In fact, both the Indo-European and the Semitic roots for “man” mean “person of the earth”.) What surprises me is that no justification is given for Prometheus creating humanity. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish for one, before we existed, the Igigi Gods who worked the earth rebelled, so Enki created humanity to replace them. In Hellenic mythology, however, I can’t find any explanation other than it was done at Zeus’ order, which, for an issue as important as our existence, intrigues me to say the least.

On the other hand, while researching this question, I did come across this touching quote by Aesop (Fab. 516):

The clay which Prometheus used when he fashioned man was not mixed with water but with tears. Therefore, one should not try to dispense entirely with tears, since they are inevitable.

It was also Prometheus who established which portion of a sacrificed animal should be eaten by mortals, and which should be offered to the Immortals. This episode is recorded in Hesiod’s Theogony. In those days, it hadn’t yet been decided whether the Gods should receive the meat and fat of the sacrifice, which were obviously more desirable, or the leftovers. Prometheus thus prepared two portions of a bull, which he placed in front of Zeus: one with the best parts covered with the guts of the sacrifice, and one with the bones lathered in fat to make them look tastier. According to Hesiod, Zeus guessed the trickery; Pseudo-Hyginus writes that he was deceived. Either way, Zeus chose the bones, leaving us mortals to eat the meat and fat after sacrifice.

As a punishment for this deception, Zeus removed fire from the earth. This is when Prometheus’ most famous myth comes into play: he decided to steal fire and return it to humankind. He succeeded, hiding the embers in a hollow fennel-stalk. In various texts, after this, he gave us one final gift by instructing us in art and science.

I find this episode particularly interesting due to my upbringing in New Zealand mythology and culture. In Polynesia, we have a hero named Maui (you may know him from Disney’s Moana) who is also a trickster and a didactic figure, who holds humanity close to heart and stole fire for us. I have always found the similarities between Maui and Prometheus - and between various other Greek and Maori myths - to be striking.

This final trick of Prometheus caused Zeus to devise two punishments: for humanity, he created Pandora, the first woman and the one who unleashed all the sorrows of the world; as for Prometheus, he was chained to a rock in the Caucasus and condemned to having his liver eaten every day by an eagle, the symbol of Zeus. There is a play attributed to Aeschylus which focuses on this episode and Prometheus’ subsequent freeing by Herakles, called Prometheus Bound.

All in all, Prometheus distinguishes himself from other Gods through his care for humanity and how much he was willing to risk for us. In certain aspects, I find him similar to Hermes, also a trickster in a way and who bears the epithet Friend of Man (Φίλανδρος). Unfortunately, while Hermes is a well-known God, cults to Prometheus are little attested. For a God to whom we owe so much, it’s a bit of a shame, really.

#prometheus #hellenic polytheism #ancient greece #props to me for getting through this whole post without mistyping titan as titanic

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kenzierose53 · 4 years

Text

Promises (xvii)

ORPHEUS

The bright glare of the sun made my pounding headache even worse. It's been one year since I last saw her and I decided to celebrate by drinking my feelings away. My gift this morning was a raging hangover, something I have only barely experienced before.

Last night was a blur but there are specific things that I can remember. My mind was playing sick tricks on me last night. I could have sworn I heard the train come up last night but what hurt the most was last night I thought I saw her. It was only a glimpse before she disappeared but she was right there in the trees, looking at me. Her hand was over her mouth, almost as if she wasn't expecting to see me...or maybe she was biting back obscenities.

She has to be beyond angry at me for leaving her down there. I let her down. Even if Persephone is successful in her mission who is to say that she will want to come back to me. She is the most important in my life...without her I am nothing.

"Are you in there boy?" Hermes' rich voice came through my door. Without answering he went ahead and walked right in. It didn't take him long to make is his to my crumpled state. He placed down a plate of something before making his way towards me. His head was shaking when he took in the array of empty bottles.

The disappointed look on his face made me feel ashamed of my choice. I hung my head in shame as he started to pick up the bottles without saying anything. Orpheus, you are an adult, stop acting like a child! Pulling myself off the bed I tried to help Hermes but a wave of nausea hit me.

Quickly I ran to the bathroom and emptied the little contents of my stomach. My body was shaking as a cold sweat came on my brow. I felt a soothing hand rubbing my back causing tears to spring to my eyes. Who am I anymore? "I'm sorry," I whispered out.

Hermes has been trying to take care of me through these hard times and I have been pushing him away. One of the only people who truly cared for me I was pushing away just because I was hurting. I am so selfish. "Everything is going to be okay. Do you think she would want to see you like this?" Hermes' words felt warm.

Something in the way he reassured me sparked something inside of me. I pushed myself up from the floor with a new outlook on how I am handling things. No longer will I fall in on my sorrows, she would be so disappointed in me. I have to do better by her. Even if Persephone doesn't bring her back to me, I will still make my way to her regardless. I can't let her be even more disappointed in me.

I walked out of the bathroom, ignoring the screaming headache and stomach pain. Quickly I got dressed for the day and started to make my way to the door. "Where are you going?" Hermes' voice called from behind me.

I had honestly forgotten that he was in here I was so wrapped up in my thoughts. Turning I looked at my confused godfather, "We have a bar to open." I spoke as if it was the most obvious thing, which to me it was. Hermes just gave me a slow not before following me down the stairs.

"Before you get too focused, eat up. We have a long day ahead of us." I chose to ignore the hint of excitement in his tone. It didn't take me long to down the food before getting to work. Time passed quickly, the regular faces coming by.

Everyone seemed to be in a very good mood today. The air felt lighter, the air fresher, the sun brighter...must be the weather that is making everyone so happy. The music was more lively than normal, it brought a small smile to my face. The good energy was rubbing off on me.

Suddenly the music stopped as the door slammed open. Cheers sounded from the crowd at the person who entered. I couldn't see who it was, they were concealed in the masses of people. Suddenly the figure sang out, "Are you wondering where I've been?" Persephone!

Quickly I ran out from behind the bar, beyond nervous to see her. Did she pull through on her promise? Was my love back? It was easy for me to push through the crowd, only taking me seconds to reach the front of the crowd.

My heart dropped in my chest...she was alone. She wasn't here! I tried to control my tears as best as I could but I could feel a few slide down my face. The goddess caught my eyes giving me a large smile. How can she be so happy? She broke her promise! Persephone opened her mouth to say something but I took off towards my room.

I could feel my resolve dropping quickly. She wasn't coming home! Gods Orpheus you were so stupid to even think shewould come home again! When I made it to my room, the scream I had been holding in came out. Who was I to think Hades would let her come home? Who was I to think that Persephone would bring her home!

The photo of her on my nightstand was taunting me. Picking it up I felt my heart break even farther. I will never see heragain. In my frustration, I threw the photo against the wall successfully shattering the glass. My mind was racing with a million different thoughts about how little my life means now.

"Orpheus," a soft voice called from behind me. I refused to turn towards her, my anger taking over everything. "Orpheus please, let me explain."

This caused me to turn around. Persephone stood in my doorway staring at the shattered frame on the floor. She tore her gaze from it to stare at me confused. "How could you?" I yelled at her causing her to shrink back slightly. She opened her mouth to continue but I cut her off, "You lied to me! You promised that you would bring her home and you didn't!" My voice was rising with each word. I'm sure the bar below me could hear me but I didn't care.

Persephone started to walk towards me but I held my hands out stopping her. "Orpheus please listen to me," her voice was pleading but I didn't want to listen to her.

"You know how much she means to me! I bet you didn't even try to bring her home to me!" I could feel my energy start to drain as it finally sunk in...she's not coming home. "Where is she," my voice broke at the end as I collapsed onto the ground.

I could hear her footsteps come towards me. She dropped to her knees in front of me, cradling my head in her hands. "Get it all out of your system?" her voice was quiet. Slowly I nodded her head causing her to give me a small smile. "Good. I would rather you take it out on me over her."

I felt my heart stop. "Her?" She just nodded at me with a big smile on her face. "You're not lying to me are you?" Again, she just shook her head. "Where is she?" I could feel the bright smile that took over my face.

"I didn't want your reunion to be in a bar in front of everything poet," she started. That explains why she wasn't with Persephone when she came in. "Look out your window towards the field of flowers."

Before she could finish her sentence, I was sprinting towards the window. It took me a moment to spot what I was looking but I felt my heart stop when I did. In the distance, I could vaguely make out a figure with short black hair sitting alone. My heart started to jump in my chest as I started at the figure. I jumped slightly when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Persephone rested her hand on my shoulder before whispering in my ear, "Go get her."

For some reason, I was frozen in my spot, the fears of her rejection flooding my mind. "What if she doesn't want me anymore," my voice was shaky, I'm not sure if from fear of nerves.

Persephone pulled me into a hug, though it did little to calm my nerves. When she pulled back she gave me a sad smile, "She has the same fears about you poet." My heart hurt thinking that she was afraid of me. "The longer you wait here the more those fears grow."

Her words caused me to sprint out the door, followed by her laugh. I ignored the calls from all around me as I pushed my way out of the bar. The only thing on my mind was seeing her again. The thought of holding her in my arms again caused my heart so skip a beat.

When I approached the field, I could feel my nerves start to double. The figure remained seated facing away from me playing with a flower. I came to a stop behind her, not sure what to do. The figure stiffened at the sound of my gasp, a gasp fell from her lips.

She stood and finally turned to face me. I felt as if I was seeing her again for the first time, she looked just as beautiful. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. Neither one of us spoke a word, just taking in the fact we are in front of each other again.

Her small hand came up and covered her mouth. "It's you," her melodic voice whispered.

I could feel all the fears I had melt away only to be replaced with butterflies. My words were still caught in my throat. After a few deep breaths, I was able to nod my head and squeak out, "It's me."

The biggest smile broke out on her face. It felt like the world around me was finally alive. She took a timid step towards me which caused the butterflies to double. "Orpheus," it sounded like she was begging for confirmation that I am me.

This time I took a step towards her, the smile growing bigger on her face. "Eurydice." That was the first time I have said her name in a year. It felt like heaven coming out of my mouth. My Eurydice was finally home!

She nodded her head at me before her tears started to fall. We both took off towards each other, her launching herself into my arms. I was holding the world in my arms again. My own tears started to slide down my face. I never thought I would have her in my arms again. The only noise between the two of us came from our sobs.

I gripped her tighter to me, never wanting to let her slip through my fingers again. My Eurydice. My love. My world. She's back! The world around me was filled with color, music, and life again. How did I survive one whole year without her?

She pulled herself back slightly to rest her forehead on mine. Her eyes were still closed but a smile was on her face. "Orpheus," her voice was barely audible.

I felt like it was the first time she said my name again, the butterflies taking over. A blush took over my face at the feelings that were going on inside of me. "Yes?" My voice caused her eyes to slowly open.

Oh, how I missed looking into those eyes. My heart fluttered when she placed a hand on my cheek. Instead of replying she lowered her head towards me, my eyes widened slightly. She was taking her sweet time but I was impatient. Pulling her closer to me, I attached her lips to mine. I felt like I was floating on air. My life was full of light again. My Eurydice was back in my arms!

#hadestown #hadestown fanfic #hadestown fanfiction #hadestown fic #orpheus #eurydice #orpheus and eurydice #orphydice #hades #hermes #persephone #promises #fanfiction #fanfic

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