So yeah, hey to all you people out there. Sorry that this took way longer than planned- I was reveling in the two days of school I had off. I love holidays (especially the ones I don't actually celebrate.) :P
Also, this chapter is pretty short. Sincere apologies for that, but I wanted to make it short. It was a conscious decision, really! Really! So anyway, its mostly character reflection. Whoops. I wrote this at 11 PM, so also sorry in advance if it rambles.
Leo couldn't move, paralyzed by the feeling which pervaded his soul, the premonition of something about to happen; a miracle or disaster, he couldn't know. Sholeh breathed quietly in his arms, her eyelids fluttering slightly, though closed. The boy stared at the pale blue veins under the arch of her eyebrows, so delicate and yet so strong, like the striated surface of marble or granite. Suddenly, Leo realized that she was asleep, and wondered curiously of what, of whom she dreamed. It could not be Kronos, for she was so peaceful. He smiled at the girl, and moved her slightly to free his leg that was tingling unpleasantly from the lack of circulation. Did she dream of him? Or did the fears that haunted her during day do so at night? Leo hoped desperately for the latter: if she dreamed of himself, then she would be destroyed by what he knew was coming. Hades would never release him; Leo realized suddenly that there would be no escape. Not even Sholeh the Titan-slayer could reverse death.
But he had to keep hope, he reminded himself, for her sake. And then Leo could hear, so clearly, the notes rising in his mind. Jumping and crackling like a fire in sparkling bursts of energy. His hands itched for a pencil and staff paper to write the melody down, but Leo was loath to disturb the sleeping Sholeh. The son of Apollo closed his eyes, clutched the girl closer to his chest, and allowed the inferno of music to engulf him.
Hours later, Sholeh stood in Hades' central throne room. The lord of the dead was conspicuously missing, and his daughter sighed, irritated. She grasped Leo's hand tighter and turned to him. The boy smiled, his chocolate eyes lighting up when he met her dark blue ones. Sholeh had awoken to the selfsame gaze earlier that morning, and had immediately known what she had to do. Waiting was torture; there could be no more of it. So she and Leo had somehow wandered down to the main throne room and waited for her father to appear. She simply had to confront Hades and end this spectral imitation of life.
That's all death really was, she thought absently. Not a brick wall, but a kind of semi-permeable membrane- that's the barrier you crossed. Death itself was a tawdry simulation of existence. She had seen Elysium, and the Fields of Asphodel, and Tartarus. Perhaps her father had tried to make the afterlife like real life, because reality was what he wished so bitterly to rule over. In doing so, he had cut out those little departments, the separate places one could go. It was the only way he could keep order, really: without the driving force of fate that was omnipresent in life, but completely missing in death, what else was there to keep chaos at bay? Sholeh shook her head to clear away her musings.
Hades suddenly appeared in his throne, huge, graceful, and dangerous as a panther. Sholeh stared challengingly at her father, as the Lord of the Dead silently appraised her. "We need to talk," she said, her voice strong and defiant.
"Yes," Hades replied, and raised his hand deliberately, pointing to the door from which Sholeh and Leo had come. "He has to go."
Sholeh affectionately clasped Leo's hand tighter for a moment and then dropped it suddenly, as if she were disgusted by the boy's presence. "Leo," she commanded, not needing to finish the order. Sensing that some fatal and determining force was about to come into play, Leo strode out the door, pausing only to look into Sholeh's eyes again. The laughter that he saw so often within them was gone, replaced by a burning, ardent flame. She nodded curtly to him, her body tense and sharp as a military leader. He left, and the room was dark.
"Father," Sholeh said quietly, scared by the echoing crack the door caused when Leo slammed it. She tried to cling to the noise, memorize it, so that she could remember him. And she was afraid that she needed to hear a noise to remember him.
"You want his life, do you not?" the Lord of the Dead asked suddenly, his voice resounding with raw power.
"Yes." Sholeh screamed the word over and over in her mind.
"As I have told you before, the scales of death are a delicate balance. Once someone dies, they must readjust. And if you want him back, these scales must keep equilibrium." Hades leaned forward in his seat.
"What are you saying…?" Sholeh began. Her throat suddenly felt disturbingly dry. Flames licked the obsidian floor beneath her when the idea sprung to her mind. "But Orpheus… you gave him the chance. You said if he just didn't look back, that Eurydice could live." Sholeh looked up from the floor to gaze into Hades' eyes. They were devoid of all emotion, all mercy, all humanity. "Please, Father," she begged, her voice wrenched with unshed tears, "If ever you loved me, if ever I pleased you, brought glory to the name Hadeva," Sholeh swallowed the hateful word, "Give me the same task you gave Orpheus. Give me the same task."
"No." Hades' proclamation was a gunshot and Sholeh screwed her eyes shut in pain. "Orpheus was never given a chance. I knew that he couldn't succeed. By the nature of the very task, he never had a chance. I didn't even bring Eurydice from the Fields of Asphodel; what he saw was only a phantasm. Death had to maintain its balance." (AN: see bottom of the page for explanation of this; i can't figure out how to put a footnote in.)
"What must I do?" Sholeh asked after a pause. Doubt was gone from her mind; she would pay the price; any price, because the loss was much too dear to her. All that remained was fiery determination.
"A life for a life," Hades intoned coldly. The black walls sparkled in response. "Your life for his. You stay with me forever. Here, in the Underworld. I can make you Lady of the Inferno." Sholeh gasped in agony, but her father already knew her answer. "There will be a ball in two days to celebrate your permanent move here."
"No, no," Sholeh begged, her voice breaking in time with her heart. She fell to her knees in prayer, invoking all the gods to help her, but the only god with authority now was sitting before her. Suddenly a memory was imprinted for a brief moment before her eyes: it was Leo lying lifeless, pale, and broken upon the ground. And then, it was his smile and Sholeh Prometheus was defeated. "Don't tell him," she said, between sobs, shedding tears for her own death. "Say that we'll both live." She could see from beneath the nimbus of her black hair that her father leaned back, smug and bowed his head.
"Why?" she cried. What will it feel like to die? To stay here for all eternity? Like falling asleep? Or a great journey, like falling off the edge of the world? Will all the color fade for me, and my memories as well? Maybe to die will be the greatest adventure of all. Maybe it's better to burn out in a flame of glory than to fade away. I don't know. I couldn't live knowing that I had a chance to save him, and didn't take it. Even at the end of the world, I died for him.
I'm never coming home, Nico and Percy and Annabeth. Don't wait up for me.
AN/ footnote: So basically here I'm going with Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium. He says in it that Hades only "presented an apparition" to Orpheus of his wife Eurydice.
