A/N: Hey guys, I just wanted to let you all know there's maybe only like, three or four chapters left after this one. I hope it doesn't seem like things are moving too fast, but with only so many contestants left and all the suspicion about Kore now with the whole Hephaestus ordeal, the Gamesmakers will be speeding things along, y'know? If you have any questions/criticisms, feel free to say!
Also, I'd like to take a moment to answer a quick question from a guest called Non, that asks if Hades has a bit of an accent, as hinted at from the way he talks?: Yes, he does have an accent, actually. I imagine him having a deep Virginian accent, as that is where I see his province in his republic being established in.
And thank you again to everyone for your continued support and comments, it means so much and I hope you enjoy the next chapter, though I must mention there are some sexual themes towards the end, so if you're uncomfortable with such thing, feel free to skip over.
"Can you pass me the canteen?"
"Sure."
The movement is stiff, passing of uneasy fingers and weary stares. I try to shine my eyes for him, try to say 'I'm sorry' for the hundredth time. He takes the canteen without acknowledging me though, like he's done the past day and a half.
We haven't talked about Hephaestus yet, or the note Hades finally noticed written on the parachute. It's a subject we're apt to avoid, instead spending what could be our final hours simply surviving. Stoking the fire, eating, drinking water and healing until it's as if our injuries inflicted by Aphrodite and Pan were never there at all.
Everything in me wishes to tell Hades the whole story, from the moment my name was drawn up until this very second we sit together in guilty silence. I want to say I don't understand just as much as he doesn't, and that I didn't tell him because I was afraid, because I'm still afraid. No matter how much I deny I want to win these Games and instead help Hestia to do it, that doesn't mean I don't want to live.
I don't understand why I want to make it out of here so desperately bad when there's nothing to leave to but a new Game to play, but the basic instinct in me wants to survive, wants to fight. I don't want to die in this place, made by Capital hands with the humans inside set up like frivolous little pieces to demonstrate false order.
I don't want to die before I see seventeen, like Plutus.
And yet I don't want Hades to hate me even more. I don't want to watch little Hestia killed the way I killed Pan, my bare fingers still thrumming with his diminishing pulse beneath them.
The Capital has me pegged in place, a butterfly under a microscope dying without sunlight, doused in an acid solution that drains me dry. Hades was right– they have ripped off my wings. Because I question their rule but I never speak the words aloud. I want to change the world, but I don't want to die. And as long as I just sit here in the dark, don't say a word, no change will ever come.
We have to go to the surface after a while to get more water, something to eat because stale bread and eaten apples and cured meat can only get us so far.
I watch cautiously as Hades fills the canteen, on high alert in case the Capital sends something clamoring our way. My hand shakes where I hold the scythe at my side, broken wrist of the other arm burning under the weight of its splint in the afternoon sun.
The heat is even more intense now, sweat rolling down both mine and Hades' skin.
Cautiously, I dip my hair into the water of the stream just for cool relief, glance up through the droplets to find Hades looking at me, mouth bowed. "Your mentor and mine don't seem to like each other much," he says after a moment.
"Prometheus doesn't really like anyone," I say.
Hades shakes his head. "They fight a lot," he says. "Ev'ry time the tributes were put together somewhere, I watched Hypnos and Prometheus argue."
I glance to the open space around us then, look for listening ears though it's useless because the Gamesmakers will be sure I can't see. "He was like that with Atlas– the twins' mentor," I say, and Hades' eyes go sharp. "Maybe they were arguing over whose tributes got more publicity?"
"Yeah," Hades says, but neither of us believes my guess. "Come on, we should get back under before someone finds us."
"Or something," I say, retrace our steps back towards the cavern and stop dead in my tracks when I hear the trumpet blare.
Hades is right next to me, hand gone to the belt at his waist. "Who was that for?" he asks, more to no one than me but I answer him anyways.
"Maybe it's a Demigod," I say, try to reassure him, yet I have a sinking feeling in my gut that I'm wrong, in one way or another.
When we find out later, sitting in the low limbs of a tree, licking cattail juice from our fingers, that it is Apollo that trumpet was for, I can't breathe until Hades gets me below the ground again.
"I'm sorry," are the first words out of Hades' mouth in the safety of the dark. "Kore, I'm so sorry."
"Me too," I whisper, though I'm not sorry for myself.
What is Artemis doing now, out there all alone without her twin, her flesh and blood? Is she mourning him like she must have mourned Hebe? Does she even want to live anymore? She'd said that Apollo always came back. No matter what, he came back. But this time he won't return to her.
He won't return ever– just like Plutus.
Just another loved one, another innocent life claimed under Capital rule.
And here I am, sitting still, letting it happen, not trying to stop it. All I've ever done is let it happen, a stand-by little girl too afraid to speak up.
"Hephaestus gave me the medicine," I blurt, watch the flitter of knowing surprise take over Hades' expression.
"I figured as much," he says, licks his lips and draws stray patterns in the dirt. One looks like an arrow and my heart cringes in my chest. "Why'd he do it?"
"I don't know," I say, because I honestly don't, not really. "He just…he said I wasn't what the Capital called me– a Maiden."
"And what did he mean by that?" Hades asks, appearance cross like he doesn't believe me all the way, not yet.
I sigh, feel stupid as I again say, "I don't know…" bite my lip and glance to the darkness around us. "He called me Persephone, he said I was–"
"The Dread Queen," Hades answers, his whole posture going soft, his eyes suddenly focused on mine.
"Yeah," I breathe out. "Does that have meaning to you?"
Hades nods, glances around the cave and turns guarded once more. I know then he'll tell me, but he won't tell me the truth. Can't tell me the truth. He has to play the part the way we all have to, the stupid little pawn that the Capital has under their thumb. Because even if Hades has defied them already with his accusing words over the period of time I've spent with him here, it has never been something like this, not in the way he leans so close to me we share breath, pulses beating fast in sync.
"She's an ancient Goddess they talk 'bout in my republic," he says, and I can hear the secrets in his tone when he adds, "And other old republics."
"What was she a Goddess of?" I ask, hands shaking.
"Spring," he says like a conspiracy plan. "But the King of Darkness, he stole her away. He was deadly, you see, and wanted a taste of life. But Persephone, she fought him the whole way. She wouldn't give in, not until she got what she wanted out of the deal."
"And what did she want?" I ask, try and decipher the meaning, the hidden message in it all.
"Change," Hades says, has the oxygen leaving my lungs. "When the Dark King took her, it turned the world to winter without her presence. Persephone would not watch the innocents die though. She made the Dark King promise her balance, and that's why there is winter and there is spring– the Dark King lets her live above half the year to bring the change the world needs to live. To bring the harvest."
I swallow at his last words, reach through the space between us and softly touch his hand. He lets me, intertwines or fingers together and I realize that even though it's been just a day since I last touched him, I have missed the feeling of his skin against mine. "Is that why they call her the Dread Queen?" I ask.
"In a way," Hades says softly. "They call her that not just because in her absence there is winter, but because as the Dark King's wife, she rules the darkness below just as the sun above. She rules death and chaos. She enacts curses upon evil men– because though she keeps the order of the seasons, that doesn't mean she keeps the order of those who claim false rule. The same she defies her husband's law, she defies those who act as false Gods."
He lets the story settle, lets the connotations sink in.
And within the next second I say, "I love you," and don't let him react before adding, "I love you and I wish we could live."
"Do you mean it?" he asks after a moment, everlasting silence between us before he asks, "Do you mean it even if we die?"
"I do," I whisper, realize the truth to my own words. "You're in my blood whether I want you there or not. You bleed, I bleed. I think that's just the way it is now."
"I love you too," Hades answers, tightens his fingers around mine. "I love you, Kore. I'm just sorry that it happened like this."
"I'm not," I say to him. "I'm not because it's real and it's ours and they can't have it."
And when he kisses me, I know that I've been forgiven. I know that there isn't anyone else in the world I'd rather spend my last hours with, if that really is what this time we've been given together has come to be. I know that when he lays me out on our spring bed right here in the darkness, that there isn't any going back this time and I'm okay with that.
More than okay.
In retrospect, I never thought my first intimate experience with another would be in a dark cave beneath an arena made for killing innocent things, but I doubt Hades thought any different. And I also doubt that either of us thought it would be with someone meant to be our enemy, a tragic story of star crossed lovers who find comfort in each other's embrace when faced with their own demise.
It isn't as fantastical as I thought it would be either, because while I never expected candles and rose petals, I didn't think it could be so…awkward or so out in the open for everyone to hear. But it's ours and not theirs, no matter how much the Capital would claim it to be. This is between Hades and me, no one else; something we have that they can never take from us no matter how hard they try.
At first the kissing is nice, the soft touches and the elated fumbling to take off each other's clothes. But then his fingers get tangled in the knots of my breast bindings, and I can't get his leggings past his knees, and we end up in a laughing heap on our spring bed, kissing each other softly and shivering with nerves.
"Um, Hades…" I say when we finally are naked, nestled against each other with him between my open thighs, blush tinging my skin to heat.
"Yeah?" he asks, shifting so his hip nudges against my thigh, bony where I am naturally soft and I flush even more at what I have to say.
"That's not, um…wrong entrance," I say, reach down embarrassingly between us to touch his erection and move it to the right place.
He bucks into my hand instinctively despite his obvious chagrin, gives a nervous chuckle and says, "Sorry," which tapers off into a groan as I tug at him. "Where– do you…"
"There," I say, lift my hips up so he slides into me the right way, wince when everything starts to pull and stretch. "I– um…"
"Should I stay still?" he asks, rapid pants of breath because I know from basic knowledge that while it's going to be uncomfortable for me at first, it feels good for him.
"No," I say, decide it's just best to get this over with. "No, you can move."
He does then, inexperienced hips that slide against my own as he moves as deep as he can go. "Better?" he asks.
My face scrunches up– feels like I'm being split open because Hades' having long limbs extends to every part of him and I'm considerably small in comparison, a tricky fit. "Not– not really."
"I'm sorry," he mumbles, tries to stay unmoving but his thighs are shaking, just like his arms bracketed on either side of my head.
"Don't apologize," I whisper. "I– keep goin'."
It gets better after a bit, our bodies finding a natural kind of rhythm with one another. We stifle the sounds by kissing at skin, hot open mouths panting against each other, a steady thrum. Sometimes our noses clack together awkwardly, and when a thrust of his feels particularly good I split his skin open with my teeth. But despite its awkwardness, the way we make love is sweet. It's timid and hopeful and real, and something I know I'll die happy about.
He ends up going over the edge way before I do, muttered curses as he releases hot and wet inside of me. Right away he apologizes, a steady cadence of 'sorry' because I couldn't experience the pleasure with him and because it's messy everywhere and I'm left flush on our spring bed. I giggle at him, smooth sweaty tendrils of hair away from his forehead and kiss his swollen mouth reassuringly.
"It was perfect," I say to him, because it was. "Don't ever apologize."
"Still," he says, face buried in my neck. "I want you to feel good too."
"I do feel good," I say. "I'm happy it was with you, Hades."
Biting his lip, he looks up at me then, eyes shining in the darkness. "I just…can I try…"
"Oh," I say when his fingers slip against sensitive flesh, and "oh," when the friction becomes more persistent. "Okay."
I break minutes later around his fingers, cry my release into his chest in little whimpers. It feels like lightning down to my toes, hot coils in my lower belly and this sense of relief I haven't had since the moment my name was drawn at altar.
Afterwards I'm so blissed out I can't bring myself to think about any kind of worry for the Games above or the Capital watching beyond, just lay there in Hades' arms and hum dreamily.
"If we weren't here– if we'd met somewhere else– I'd ask you to marry me," he says, fingers combing through my hair absently.
"We never would've met had we not come here," I say, turn in his embrace and prop myself up against his chest. "I'm not going to lie and say I'm ready to die, Hades. But if there is one thing I don't regret about being picked for these Games, it's that they led me to you."
He smiles, a sad kind of smile that means everything. "Hephaestus was right," he says, braces his hands against the side of my face so he can look at me, really look at me the way no one else has ever been able to. "You are Persephone. You are the Dread Queen."
"Only if you're my King," I say, trace the lines of his face in ginger memory. "You may not be dark like in the stories, but you're what I want. You are my change, Hades. You've made me unafraid."
"Nah," he says, crooked smirk and laughing chest that shakes me. "You did that yourself. You mended your wings, Kore. I just helped."
Smiling, I tuck my head against his chest again, lay in his embrace until the morning when the Games choose break our little place of solace to pieces.