by Abigail Nicole
spoilers for Reloaded & Revolutions, PG-13 to be safe, drama
Summary: "I was young, small and dark-haired in a pink dress, looking for a savior. And I ate the pomegranate seed."
Notes: I liked Persephone, vampire-ness and all. So here is my fic all about her. Rather like Liebling's, but that's from reading too many of her fic. Can't be helped. I also can't imagine her speaking with contractions in that little pristine French accent, so as much as I'd love to say 'I don't have a pink dress anymore', it will stay 'do not'. Hope it doesn't bother you!
I will be here forever.
And I suppose that is why I wanted to help him. Because I did not want to be here forever, not then, not now. But there is nowhere else to go. I am an exile. Exiles stay with the Merovingian or they are deleted. There is no second chance. Not until things change. And maybe that is part of the reason why I wanted to help him--I want things to change. I do not want to be here forever.
I was a good little girl.
No one realizes that now, when they see my too-low dresses, my cheating husband, too-tight leather, the silver-bullet-filled guns, my too sharp, too-white teeth. But I did not start out this way.
My mother loved me, you know. She was a programmer, Demeter, controlling the seasons and the agriculture aspect of the Matrix, making sure that things ran with the chaotic smoothness to imitate the human's memories of nature. I remember her smile, her golden-brown skin with that white smile that she would give me. I remember her at the train station, me in her lap as a child, telling me stories, stories about human myth, about Persephone and Demeter and how much they loved each other. I remember her stories about the place I would be going. She made it sound exciting, her words clear and cheerful as she told me about the fancy dinners, the dresses that I would wear, all the lovely things I would have. She had promised him me. I remember her last hug, the feel of her arms around me. She loved me, and you don't think a program can love like a human but it can. She saved me from death.
And put me into the hands of Satan.
He still is, you know. He is much older than me, so much older that I do not remember him except as he is now. Maybe he was created that way, long ago when the Matrix was first formed. Maybe he was the first exile, and maybe that is why he is the ruler over all of us. He liked me from the start. He wanted a wife, and he always said that I was worthy of being his wife. I was a beautiful girl, he said, and a more beautiful woman. He claims that he loves me and that there is only me.
What lies. I am sick of his lies now, sick of the lies and the other girls and the way he is, the way he dresses, the way things are. I am sick of being in exile. Mother did not lie to me. I have fancy dinners every night of the week now, dresses in every color of the rainbow that are beautiful, diamonds and jewels to my heart's content. There are parties, always parties. People to entertain, to impress, henchmen to rule over and matters to be taken care of. But I grow so sick of it.
He hurt me as a child. He trained me to be his loyal wife. He made me abhor to all the customs and made me be everything he wanted so that everything I wanted was beaten out of me. He hurt me.
But I do not know if I can be hurt anymore.
~
I was young, small and dark-haired in a pink dress, looking for a savior.
Look at me now...
~
I was not always like this.
What do you do when you are raped every day of your life? What do you do when your rapist is your husband?
Yes, I was young, so young. And I ate the pomegranate seed.
~
He loved me. He loved me like wine, chocolate cake. He loved me because I was pretty and fresh and curvy and because he could break me. I was his pomegranate, and he could bite into me and crush me and suck the sweetness out of me--again and again. Until only the seeds remain.
He never thought about me, did he? No. I was broken, his well-trained wife who would stay by him forever. He never thought of me as a person, as a threat.
So now I will surprise him.
~
I want to feel again.
It has been so long since I have felt anything other than hurt, other than anger and sorrow, other than negative emotions that have all faded into gray. I used to love him, a long time ago. And I would like to be able to look at him and feel like I loved him, be able to feel happiness and love, and to care so much for something that I would die for it. I want to be able to look upon love with something besides a hollow longing inside of me. I want to be free of this place. I want to see my mother.
But I cannot go back. Because I changed, here with Hades in this underworld. And Demeter would not know me as her daughter if she met me now.
I do not have a pink dress anymore.
~
I want change.
They say that the One will free the Matrix, destroy the programs and let the humans come back, the exiles out of their prisons. I do not know if that is only the exile humans, hiding in their underground holes, or if it is all of the exiles. But I do not care if it ends now. I would rather it end.
What do you do when all of your choices are taken away from you? That is the only thing that anyone has in this world. And I have choices no longer. All of my choices belong to him.
So I choose to take them back.
