When Persephone looks back on how she came to be where she was, it was with a smile and a roll of her hazel eyes. The legends about the gods say that her own husband raped her, kidnapped her and forced her to eat the pomegranate seeds. Oh how far from the truth they truly are. You see, there's a different tale at work here. The one that Hades and Persephone keep close to their hearts. That they've never told anyone. Persephone allowed herself to be kidnapped to escape the lusty advances of her very own father. She orchestrated her own abduction and marriage to the King of the Underworld and regretted nothing. She found love amongst the darkness. And that where she liked to stay.
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In the beginning, Persephone was taken to a great chamber, complete with a bed, all the furnishings that she could want; but she was alone. Utterly alone. Each night, she joined Hades in his great hall with tables upon tables laden with food and drink. And yet, she did not eat. She sat across from him, barely uttering a word. Those first few months were relatively silent.
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By the fourth month, Persephone was comfortable in the Underworld. She roamed freely, the shades knew her, the attendants of Hades smiled as she moved through his halls. She'd made friends there. Had become some what of an installment there. She was happy, despite the fact that she did long to see some of her friends and family again. And still, Hades had made no move to touch her. She remained the maiden she was when he'd kidnapped her. For that, Persephone was thankful. Hades was not so terrifying after all.
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By the sixth month, Persephone and Hades had a friendship. She shared things about her feelings with him that she had never shared with anyone. Not even her closest friends. Somehow, Hades had gotten her to open up. Persephone had learned about him too. And slowly, she was finding that Hades was often misunderstood. The other Gods called him a monster. But he really was not. Hades did what he did because he had to. To maintain the balance in the world that was around them. How could she hate a man who so clearly wore his burdens on his shoulders and got nothing but hatred and betrayal for it. The more that the goddess got to know Hades the man instead of Hades the King of the Underworld, the more she found herself beginning to fall in love with him. A thought she carefully guarded from both him and herself.
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By the eighth month, Persephone and Hades were hiding the feelings from each other. Persephone didn't actively avoid him, but it became increasingly hard to be around the man she'd come to know without confessing that she was falling in love with him. He'd given her a place—the only place in the Underworld, he said—that she could grow. And what she grew intrigued him. She grew the fruits of the Underworld. Provided them with her own power and increased his bounty tenfold with a simple walk through the gardens. And she cultivated orchids. Something she had discovered while on her walks with Cerberus. Hades himself grew a little bit more distant as he learned of what was happening on the mortal plane because of the fact that Persephone was not there. Demeter had all but forgotten about nature and the souls of mortals told stories of famine and starvation and death. Hades knew that to save nature, he would have to sacrifice the one thing that he'd come to love. Persephone would have to go back to her mother.
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By the tenth month, Hades knew that Persephone was needed on the mortal plane. That she would eventually leave him. And that broke his heart more than he wanted to admit. When Zeus demanded that he return Persephone to Olympus, he sent his brother a gift, hoping to placate him. The gift was in the form of a nymph. One pretty and that would catch Zeus' eye and hopefully keep them away from his precious Persephone. Because Hades would start a war for her. With his own brother. He was monster enough to protect the woman he'd come to love to the ruin of Olympus. Persephone had taken to sitting at his side while he judged souls and sent them to their eternal rest. She'd been doing that for a month now, and Hades had provided her with a throne of her own. He sought her out, valued her opinion on matters that pertained to his kingdom. At some point, he'd begun to consider her as his consort. His Queen. Hades didn't even know himself how it had happened.
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By the twelfth month, Zeus had send Hermes to the Underworld with his decree. Persephone would have to return to the realm of the living. Would have to return to her mother. The woman who had given birth to her, but used her as a pawn to get the things that she wanted. Hades had learned this over the last year that he and Persephone had been together. Their table was laden with the fruits that had been even more plentiful over the last year. Hades lead Persephone into their great hall (because damned if he didn't start considering the fortress he lived in theirs) and what unfolded next he would never, in his long immortal life, forget.
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The twelfth month was only the beginning for Persephone. As she stood next to Hades and looked over they great hall, she felt herself growing sad, growing desperate to find a reason that would mean she'd have to stay. As if the Fates had read her mind, Persephone remembered what Hades had told her about the food of the Underworld. If you ate it, you couldn't leave. Persephone didn't want to leave. She smiled at Hermes, and squeezed Hades' had as she moved towards the table and plucked a pomegranate from it. Hades read the intent in her eyes and did nothing but stand there and smile as Hermes gasped and tried to stop her. It was too late. Persephone had taken the seeds of the pomegranate and swallowed them, thus ensuring that she would always be apart of this world. Hades looked at Hermes and smiled. "She will spend seven months with me. Five months with her mother. That is my decree." Persephone stood beside him, the pomegranate forgotten on the table beside her as she looked up at Hades with a smile. She would return in five months and then they would talk. For she would not take anything less than his love then. Anything less than being his queen in every sense of the word.