AN: A continuation, of sorts, to Fruit of Knowledge
He had been wrong, so very wrong, to try and equate her to Eve. 'Mother' had never been a connation she had earned, or wanted. Maybe in a different lifetime, perhaps. But they had been forged in the fires of Tartarus itself, had lived and eaten from the barren ground too long to ever bear fruit. Even he had a hard time imagining her with child-she was only a child herself; some part of her would always be that child in the Pit. After the Pit there was no way Bane could fathom a child in her life-their life, for he would surely follow no matter her decision, for it was hers to make. He did not acknowledge the thought of being a father, did not think it possible, his instant reaction dread and fear more than anything else. A child was much too breakable, and he had enough demons to wrangle on his own. Anything begotten of his blood would become a monster as he was, undoubtedly.
No, she was not Eve. She was not the mother of the world.
She was Persephone, those treasonous seeds bursting in her fingers as she laughed, fully aware of her choice to stay in Hell, to rule. She who would be Iron Queen, called Vengeance. All could easily be attributed to the girl who even in her infancy was the heir to the League of Shadows. She could have left the League easily, started anew with all the comforts of the material world, and he would begrudge her none of it. But no. She chose to stay. And she had forged a new dynasty, a matriarchy where flames followed her heels, burning anyone close enough to see the fire in her eyes.
It was easy to see that it was her choice to stay; he did not afford himself enough influence to think he had in any way tempted her to eat those tainted seeds and seal her fate to that of the Shadows. She was born to rule, and he was merely her loyal servant. Lord of Hell? Surely not.. Even now he heeded her beck and call.
He may have held the facade in her stead, been the face of the League. But she was the true leader, even from the Shadows; Tartarus itself opening it's gates to let free its ruler, their Queen-And how beautiful, how terrible she had become in its wake.
She was Death
And he would level nations at her command.
He thinks again on that thrice-damned pomegranate in her dripping fingers by the sea in Greece, and knows, knows that she is Persephone, she is Queen.
[He would let the fires in her bones score his skin just to know how sweet it burned]
How scarlet painted her lips long before she had learned what the ruby seeds tasted like.
[And god, they tasted like the sweet sweat of her skin, of power and his downfall, of summer and sin and sea and Her]