Previously on Other Peoples' Heartache

A Debt You've Been Collecting

Note: This was not a prompt. This was eating me up and Persephone will not let me get back to Laughter Lines until I let her have a say, so here we are. This is set soon after the end of Torn Apart, back in the realm of the Greek gods. Chapter title excerpted from Cats by A Love Like Pi.

...

In the center of a land that smelled of mulch and rot, the goddess Persephone crouched with her arms sunk elbow deep into the surface of the earth. Tendril vines caressed the weary soil, releasing vitality back into the ground. It would be months before she could approach the remains of The Cage with its scattering of decomposing carcasses. The smell was more than she could stomach. She would return to heal the land when time had worn the corpses down to the bone. For now, she would begin with the garden.

So much had been demanded of the soil. Sustaining perfection against a living being's original design came at a cost her mother refused to acknowledge. The land needed time to mourn. To sleep. To receive into itself instead of pouring out every resource.

As she tended her new charge, her thoughts drifted to the others impacted by her mother's actions. Teles, her beleaguered playmate of old. A conversation with the haggard Moirai, weavers of mortal fate, had produced the name of Teles' beloved; Timothy. Timothy, who had been drawn in to become a player in the curse by powers beyond his comprehension. Their children; Lewis, Cayenne, Aji, Dulcie. Chloe and Mystery, the lone survivors of their families. The Moirai had, reluctantly, provided her with a lengthy list of names upon her request, detailing each unicorn, child, and kitsune sacrificed in her mother's schemes. She'd memorized each name.

Vivi, the grieved beloved of Lewis.

And Arthur. Poor orange child. Persephone's last meeting with the Moirai had been deeply disheartening. The future threads in which Arthur was allowed to live a satisfying and good life were vanishing, one after the other, in rapid succession. His own fault, the Moirai insisted to her. The weave of his choices was leading him straight to the Underworld and there was nothing to be done but wait for him to come to the place where he could finally rest—a rest that would begin quite soon.

"It isn't fair," she sighed. "If not for my mother, those choices would not have been forced upon him."

The edge of her new realm trembled as a foreign foot sank into the mulch and muck, followed swiftly by a second. Lead. Lithium. Gold. Particles flaked off and mixed in the dirt. She tasted concern. Sadness.

With great care, she drew the tendrils back into herself, feeling footsteps across the land like paws of a cat walking along her spine. Brushing the dirt from her body, she rose up from her knees. Cadmium arms encircled her waist from behind. She reached her arm up to where Hades' chin now rested on her shoulder and trailed vines tenderly across his face.

"For eons my heart has frozen in fear whenever you returned to my sister," he murmured. "It has leaped for joy when you were released to come home to me. It has raged against her and felt dread despair clamp tight for weeks at a time. Since the day we first escaped her and wed, your heart is mine and mine is yours. Tonight, this heart groans under a heavy weight." He pressed a kiss to her neck, drops of mercury splashing onto her chest. "What is this cry within you, Persephone? The land will heal in time."

"It is not the land I grieve for, but for one whose time will be cut short."

Hades gave a long sigh. "We have fulfilled our debt to the mortal, Arthur. We offered the ability to make a trade for the dead. We owe him nothing more."

"No, Hades. You owe him nothing more. His bargain with you was well kept on both ends. But me?" She shook her head. "I would not have even thought to ask for what he managed to do. I am still deeply in his debt, and I am not satisfied with his fate."

Hades circled around in front of her, taking the mass of vines and roots at the end of her arm and stroking them. "His fate is to rest in peace with the most deserving dead in all my realm. How is this terrible? I will not count against him the crimes of the creature his body houses. His own actions will be weighed and he will be at ease in the afterlife."

"But what good, Hades? Separated for a lifetime from the beloved he sacrificed much to save. And she, grieving his loss, will spend her brightest years drowned in her own sorrow." She lifted a single root to wipe mercury trails from his golden face. "They would have mere months together, Hades. Would that have been enough for you?"

He pulled her close, and she could feel his heart beating faster. She whispered, "All these years would not have been enough for me, had my mother succeeded in undoing you. Mortals have so much less time than we do, Hades. Is there nothing we can do?"

He laughed softly. "Why do you ask the god of the Underworld, beloved? What is it that you think I can do?" He pulled back, his eyes twinkling sapphires. "You have been in your mother's shadow far too long. Who are you, Persephone?"

Startled, she groped for the answer she had proclaimed so proudly at Demeter's undoing. "I..."

"Who are you?" He persisted. "What is it that she stole from you?"

She straightened. "I am Persephone. I am the goddess of vegetation. Of the curses laid on men's souls. But... but I have already removed all curses from them."

Hades waited. She felt his eyes on her. There was more, but he was allowing her space. Time to reach some conclusion herself. He would not supply it first and he would not punish her inability to see it quickly. She nearly choked on the warm gratitude filling her chest from such a simple thing.

Taking slow breaths, she focused. Curses on men's souls. Arthur and the Peppers, dead and alive, were all clean of curses. Even so, Arthur was doomed to a short, unhappy life, so said the Moirai.

She stiffened. The potential threads of good futures. Not all of them had vanished yet. She had seen them, but dismissed them as impossible to reach. The twists required in the fabric of reality to reach these futures would not naturally occur. But then, his impending death was the result of natural choices in the face of many supernatural factors. This death would not be so close if there had not been interference in the first place. She had a right to intervene and set things straight.

Not only did she have the right, she had the power and resources to do so.

Resolve hardened within her. She stretched on the tips of her toes and kissed copper lips. "Thank you, my love. I must speak with the Moirai. Would you dispatch Aji to the Horae? Send word that I need their help on an urgent matter. I must convene with all very soon. There is little time left to repay my debt, and much to do."