the great light borrowers
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
of something beautiful, but annihilating.
- "The Rival" Sylvia Plath
In this lifetime, the myth has reversed. Nothing is done against her will— the kidnapping, the seduction, the rape. There are no dark bruises on her hips, and when the pomegranate juice stains her lips it doesn't look like a gaping wound, but war paint.
She talks her way into the underworld.
Liquor is liquor, and Dionysius (called Monty, in this lifetime) doesn't discriminate against how it's served, whether it be in high-class wineries, or bottom-feeding dive bars, and it's in the latter that she finds him, seeks him out.
She is all that is light and spring, and the god of the Underworld merely raises a dark eyebrow at her when she slides into the bar stool beside him.
"Long way from home, aren't we, Princess?" Hades remarks, blowing smoke in her face.
She inhales to be obstinate and show she isn't afraid, although she can feel her lungs crying out in pain and betrayal at the carcinogens (but when you're immortal, does it even matter?)
"Clarke," she says, in a voice as smoky and rough as the cigarette between his lips. "I go by Clarke now." They haven't conversed in over a thousand years.
"Persephone," he spats out, also to be obstinate. "A tiger can change its name, but not its stripes."
She looks unimpressed. "Says the god who goes by Bellamy," she replies coolly, uncaring that she's revealed she's researched him before this meeting.
He shrugs. "My dearest brother," he says, and although it's spoken without a hint of malice, Clarke can feel the tension seep out of each syllable, "doesn't like it when I spend too much time away from my… designated post. I disagree. Thus, the subterfuge."
"You really think Zeus doesn't know?" Clarke asks, without disdain but curiosity and perhaps a touch of fear. He can't know what she means to do.
Bellamy gives a dark laugh, lifts the cigarette to his lips and blows out, short and tense, tight curls of smoke instead of languid waves like earlier. "He's too busy fucking one of his many girls under his many pseudonyms," he says, thinking of the latest name: Finn. His eyes turn to her in bright amusement. "Rumor has it that he has his eyes on you, Princess. Or perhaps he's had more than just that?"
Clarke scowls. "He's tried," she says sourly. "But I have no interest in such a man."
Now, unwittingly, she has his interest. He leans away from her, appraising, his arms folded. "Such a man? He's a god, Princess. The highest one there is. The supreme ruler. He's had the most beautiful women, mortal and immortal, fall into his arms. What makes you so special?"
"Hera," Clarke says bluntly.
Bellamy blinks, thinking of the small, sharp, dark woman his brother chose as his wife. She's tougher and smarter than he, and Bellamy has long thought she deserves better.
"His blatant disrespect and disregard for his wife is sickening," she says. "And Hera is a friend of mine. Even if I wanted Zeus, I wouldn't give in."
"I see," Bellamy doesn't realize it, but his eyes darken as he looks at her, swaying forward to close the distance between them. "You want a different sort of man," he says, lowly, a purr in her ear, "one who will make you his entire world. Who will never want anyone else. Who will love and worship you— not merely as a goddess, but as a woman."
Clarke tries not to breathe too deeply and quickly, struggles to maintain an unaffected facade. "Yes," she whispers, a confession that she never intended to make.
Bellamy swallows, leaning back. He had done it to intimidate her, perhaps frighten her, but it backfired spectacularly, giving way to images that he has to hastily squash, though tendrils of them snake around his subconscious, a caress he wants desperately to lean into.
In the dim light his features look ominous, but Clarke knows now she has nothing to fear from him. His move has only endeared him to her, and he has to backpedal to put distance, both physical and emotional, between them.
"But Zeus— he could make you be his," he says, frankly, harshly, his face stone. "He's done it before."
Her lips tighten. "I know," she says. She understands the motives behind such a callous speech, but can't deny that they're not true all the same.
"And your mother can't protect you?" Demeter's reputation as a mother is known far and wide amongst gods and men alike.
"She can try," Clarke says grimly. "But you know Zeus—"
"He'd turn you into a fucking bird to have his way with you," Bellamy says in disgust.
Clarke's list twist in a slight smile. "And you've never tried such tactics?" She teases.
Bellamy snarls. "I shouldn't have to," he says, "no one should have to."
They fall quiet for a moment.
"What do you want, Princess?" He asks lowly, done with this dance that's spiraled out of control.
"I came to warn you," Clarke says, and he wonders if he's looking at goddess or prophet.
He stiffens. "Warn me?"
She explains: The Titans, the Gods who ruled before Zeus and his siblings took over, were making plans to escape Tartarus, the deepest abyss in the underworld, their prison for thousands upon thousands of years.
Instead of scoffing at her and rolling his eyes at her theory, like Zeus and Poseidon and her own mother did before him, Bellamy leans closer to her. He asks her for proof, how the goddess of spring and girlhood and all that is light and innocent, could know such knowledge— and about his own territory!
"I've heard talk," Clarke says, keeping her voice down. "Some of the other gods. There are those who are tired of your and your siblings rule and want to see Titans restored."
"Like, who?"
"Atlas. Prometheus. Helios. Selene." Gods who had been replaced by younger gods or ostracized and condescended to Zeus.
Bellamy swore. "Have you told Zeus or your mother?"
Clarke's eyes are a dark blue, the ocean after Poseidon's storms. "Yes. They don't believe me."
"Why wouldn't they?"
Clarke shrugs. "They dismissed my fears. They think of me as a child and believe that they are strong enough to face anyone or anything." The Titanomachy— the long war against the Titans and the Olympians— was so long ago that the Olympians have forgotten just how difficult the war was.
But Bellamy, the god of death, knows the price all too well. He is immortal, but feels the effects of mortality every day.
"I believe you," Bellamy says, "and even if all their talk is for nothing, I would rather be safe than sorry."
"I want to help you," Clarke says, immediately.
Bellamy's lips twist. "You've helped enough," he says, though not unkindly. "And I appreciate your warning. But—"
"No buts," Clarke says firmly. "I want to protect my family and my home. This isn't me trying to prove to anyone that I'm no longer a child. My intentions are pure."
As pure as she is a maiden, Bellamy thinks, gazing at her golden hair, her bright eyes. She is lovely, in a way that all untouchable things are.
"You would need to come into the underworld," he tells her. "And it's difficult, even for gods, to leave. There's a reason why Zeus doesn't visit. Or anyone else."
Clarke's gaze softens. He doesn't say it, but she knows he's lonely. There's a reason he likes to leave, and it's not because he's uncomfortable with death. He needs to be reminded what it feels to be alive.
Suddenly another plan comes to her mind. "I'll come with you," she says. "And I won't leave."
Bellamy eyes her warily, his muscles tense. "What?"
She stands, closing the distance between them as her blonde waves touch his bicep as she leans towards him. He feels them acutely as she says, "I will be your queen."
"You can't," he says, instinctively, although something in him smarts and aches at the suggestion. "You think your mother would allow such a thing?"
Clarke scowls. "My mother is not my master," she says. "I am not a child, and have not been for some time. She just believes she has power over me because her interests and mine have happened to align all these years."
She had done what her mother wanted because she, naturally curious and intelligent, loved learning, loved learning about earth and the land. She studied medicine and music with Apollo, philosophy and mathematics with Athena, strategy with Ares, mechanics and forgery with Hephaestus, and even love and homemaking with Aphrodite and Hestia.
Her mother would love to have her married to the handsome and wise Apollo, or, better yet, Zeus, to be the new reigning queen of the Gods, but Clarke despises the condescending Apollo and the lecherous Zeus. She has never put much thought into marrying, although many times she does want companionship.
Marriage for her doesn't need to be for love, although Bellamy seemed to instinctively be able to voice what her deepest, most secret and fantastical wishes for marriage were.
And she instinctively knows that he is the only God capable of giving them to her. Perhaps not now, not right away, but they are immortal— they have plenty of time for that.
"I will help you," she tells him, "ensuring Tartarus is completely inescapable. I will help you rule and look after your subjects."
"And what do you get out of that deal, Princess?" He asks her. "You don't know what it's like down there. Why are you so willing, so eager, to give up life here?"
"I get you," Clarke says. "Your protection and your kingdom."
It dawns on him. "Zeus can't touch you there," Bellamy says, slowly. "And I would never let him touch you if you ever came up here with me." He scrutinizes her, knowing that Zeus's pursuit of her must be far more aggressive than she let on if she felt her only option was to marry him.
But her assessment of him was correct: Zeus might be his brother, might be the ruler of the Gods, but even he feared Hades. He wouldn't dare touch what was Bellamy's, no matter how much he wanted her.
"I agree on one condition," he found himself saying, his lips and heart speaking faster than his brain could reason.
Clarke draws herself up, bravely, her chin thrust outward. "Yes?" She says, hoping to convey more courage than she feels.
Bellamy stands and gently takes that darling, proud little chin of hers in his hand. "If we are to spend eternity together," he breathes, and she shivers, "I should like to see if we are at least compatible."
"And how…"
She trails off as he kisses her, raven black lashes, so long, close and descend upon her own cheeks, the stubble from his beard scratching her porcelain skin, lightly, like nails massaging scalp, and his lips touch hers. The nicotine is slightly sweet, but she detects mint, sharp, fresh, and tart, and she touches her tongue to his, eager for more. In return he plunders her berry mouth, buries his hand in her golden tresses, long, dark fingers tangled. She raises up, hooks her arms around his neck, pulls him closer, mark for mark, this kiss a war all of their own.
He wants to cave in on himself, wrap himself around her, but they're still in public, even if it's only a dive bar of Monty's, and the patrons don't know that they're Gods.
They pull apart at the same time, and Clarke clears her throat, her smoky voice rough. "Does that… answer your question?"
In response, he wraps his arms around her and in a blink of an eye, they're gone. When Clarke opens her eyes next, they're in a place she's never been before: the Underworld.
"Welcome home," Bellamy's voice rumbles in her ears, and instead of shivering she feels a long tendril of warmth curl within her and spread, like a glow, "my queen."