A/N: This is a gift for vialethe's holiday stocking on fandom_stocking on dreamwidth. I had fun writing it, enjoy!
)O(
He tries so hard to entertain her.
He gives her shiny jewels which glow with the light of a thousand glorious moons, which are more beautiful than anything in the world. He says that when she wears them, her beauty could rival Aphrodite's. She thinks that that's rubbish: she feels so cold whenever one of them touches her skin that she can't imagine she looks anything but sickly.
He gives her robes made of water that never wet her skin and always stay in perfect condition. They flow around her body and along her curves, constantly moving. Whenever he forces her to wear then, she can never be sure which parts of her body are covered at the moment. Goosebumps pop up on her skin and shivers run down her spine.
He gives her pets to play around with. The moths only remind her of butterflies and the good times she was swept away from. The cockroaches repulse her, because even though they are strong, seemingly respectable animals, she feels dirty around them. But the lost, sinful souls are the worst. He's made a little zoo for them, not far away from where she sleeps. Whenever she forget they're there and wanders down the path that for the life of her she couldn't distinguish from other paths, she comes back screaming. That is the only time when she will allow herself to think of grasses swaying in the breeze, of her mother running laughing through a field and watching flowers sprout from the ground wherever her feet land. Those thoughts of home are more painful than anything she's experienced here, but they calm her down.
He tries so hard to make her happy that sometimes, she wonders if he would let her go if she agreed to have his children. She could say that she wanted to raise them like she had been raised, because hadn't she turned out well? She could even insult him and tell him how much she pitied him for having to live here, and didn't he see that their children would hate it too?
At the end of the day however, she always dismisses this idea, because it is at the end of the day that she spends time with him. For all his faults, she can see that he loves her, if blindly. She can't hurt a man who commands all of the Underworld and deals with beasts fiercer than she has ever imagined, but looks at her like she's the only good thing in his life.
He needs to be saved, and better yet, he wants to be saved, though he never says it. He relies on a thin, unworldly woman to lead him to a better place.
Sometimes, she thinks that what he really wants to do is to die. Like the lost souls however, he can never get what is just within arm's reach.
His curse is the greatest one of them all, and she wonders what in the world he did to deserve it.
)O(
Fin