A/N: Thanks for your reviews! I'm glad you liked that glimpse of playfulness between them. I did promise mushiness, didn't I? You keep me going when my brain is slowly leaking out of my ears from studying... I had a midterm last night, and it was MUCH harder than the first one! But hey, at least I got another chapter in! I'm working on the next, and it will be a mixture of sweet and drama. But you already knew that, since Thanatos' lessons are next! I can hardly believe this story is up to 90k words, and almost 200 reviews! That's amazing!

Chapter 25: Making a Forest

Hades and Persephone met in an empty room half an hour later, long enough for them to wash and change. Hades found the ends of Persephone's damp hair to be fascinating. He couldn't help but to reach for them, squeezing out a few drops of water. She turned her head and smiled at him. He snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. He rested his chin on the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair. Hecate came in a minute later and eyed them critically. Persephone nervously ran her fingers over his hands, but he was utterly relaxed. She had seen him at his most bare last night. Nothing could make him give her up now.

Hecate broke into a smile. "Now that I have the two if you—suds free—since I so rarely have more than one pupil at a time, I thought this would be a good day to teach Lady Persephone how to meld magic."

Hades blinked incredulously at the older goddess. She stared blankly back at him, waiting for him to object. Finally he shrugged. This was going to be an… interesting lesson. Melding magic was an extremely intimate act. It required the greatest of trust between two magic-users. What they could accomplish together was much more than either could do alone, but it was difficult to allow someone else into so much of yourself. It was an act of intercourse that was second only to making love. He was not someone who could engage in such lightly. Hecate knew full well what she was asking them to do. He was willing to try it… but only with Persephone. And Persephone was an innocent, unaware of how close they would become. She needed to know the full of it before she agreed.

"A moment with my lady," he said.

Hecate stepped back. He took Persephone's elbow and led her to a corner. His shadow stretched to form a wall between them and the rest of the room. She looked at his shadow with a sigh of envy.

"I wish I could do that," she said, reaching out to skim her fingers across his shadow. He shivered at her touch, and took her hand.

"Persephone," he began, "You should know that melding magic is not like anything you've experienced before. It will bring us quite… close. You have every right to refuse if you wish."

"Why would I refuse?" she asked guilelessly. "There is no one else I want to be close to."

Her answer touched his heart. He felt the same for her. "It's more than that," he struggled to explain. "The melding of magic will cause us to be bound together for the duration of the merge. We will share magic, share thoughts, share hearts and souls. In truth, we could not be closer than if we were to share our bodies as well. I would not wish for you to be forced into anything you didn't want, to taken by surprise."

She was stunned by his revelation. "Hecate would ask this of us?" she wondered out loud.

"She knows," he confirmed. "That is why she couldn't ask anyone but us to try it, and she waited until we were courting to suggest it. Not many can engage in that level of intimacy easily."

To her credit, she didn't immediately answer. She considered it, watching him. "Have you ever done a meld before?"

He smiled faintly. "I have never found someone I could trust enough to let inside me," he responded. "But I'm willing to try with you."

She smiled back at him and touched his face. "I want to try with you," she said firmly.

He turned his head to kiss her fingers, letting his shadow fall. Hecate was entertaining herself by rolling purple-black orbs over her hands. She looked up at them expectantly.

"We have decided to try," he announced for both of them.

Hecate nodded. She had them sit on the floor facing each other, with only a couple inches of space between them.

"Since this is your first time using magic together, I suggest you take a few minutes to familiarize yourselves with your partner's magic," Hecate instructed. "Lady Persephone, this isn't an endurance exercise, so there's no need it hold it when you become fatigued."

Hades looked to his love curiously. Unlike most, he never had a problem manifesting his magic. Frankly, Hecate had taught him to control his magic out of self-defense. Before then, he'd been a hazard to everything around him with his volatile outbursts of power. Persephone took a deep breath and closed her eyes. A look of calm concentration came over her face. She held up her palms, and a green mist formed in her hands. It solidified into delicate, twisting vines that curled round her fingers.

Enchanted, he reached out and very gently brushed one of the vines. It reached for him, circling his fingertip. The feel of her magic was light and fresh, like sunshine itself. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. A faint line of strain appeared in her gaze, and the vines abruptly dissolved. He missed her magic already, though his mouth went dry at the thought of joining with her shortly.

"Charming," he told her, and she blushed at the compliment. She didn't look away though, as she might have before they were courting. She accepted the praise, and let it bolster her confidence. His heart constricted suddenly. She was a beautiful woman. He could hardly believe she had chosen to be at his side.

Hecate cleared her throat, interrupting his study of the woman he loved.

"You're already family with the manifestation of my magic," he said blandly, and set his shadow to circle Persephone lightly. She laughed and ran her hand over his shadow. It arched into her caress like a cat. His breath caught in his throat. It was like she was touching a part of his soul.

"If you are ready to proceed," Hecate said pointedly.

Hades felt no repentance. The elder goddess knew he had recently begun courting his love, and what she had asked of them would only lead to closer intimacies. She had only herself to blame if she found them easily distracted by each other.

"If you can contain your shadow, Hades," Hecate instructed, "I wouldn't wish for Lady Persephone to be overwhelmed when you begin the meld."

No, and he wouldn't either. He withdrew his shadow from around her and arranged it in a humanoid shape behind him. Never mind that it sat at a completely different angle from the women's shadows. It took far too much concentration to make his shadow mimic him exactly. Usually he didn't bother.

"The two of you should touch in some way. Holding hands will be sufficient," Hecate told them.

Hades offered his hands to Persephone. She placed her smaller, more delicate digits in his.

"If you will each gather a small—very small, Hades!—portion of your magics in your hands."

He called on his shadow, and thin tendrils of it flowed down his arms into his palms. He could see the vines once again form along Persephone's skin. He yearned to touch it again. He shadow reached forward before he remembered to keep it in check.

"Now, gently, extended your magics toward each other. It may feel quite strange, but don't…"

Hecate's voice faded into the background, for his entire focus was on Persephone and his magic. He felt vines tickling across his skin, just as his shadow was reaching tiny filaments out to her. Their magic touched, circled each other, and then without warning plunged in.

As much as he wanted to rush to explore this new presence he could feel inside him, he refrained from doing anything. He didn't want to frighten her with his eagerness, or hurt her by the sudden surge of his magic. On the other hand, she had no such hesitation with him. She drove into him. He knew he was rough-shod and craggy like weathered stone. He felt her wiggling inside him, her magic seeking out the cracks in his being. It was like tree roots filling in the fissures in a rock face. Only instead of wrenching him apart, she anchored him, held him together. His Persephone was lithe and flexible—and she was utterly set on healing him any way she could.

When she seemed to have settled within him, he began to stretch toward her. She provided him with supple cohesiveness. What he gave her was strength and stability. Her vines, used to twining around her fingers, suddenly thickened and reached upward like young trees. Startled, she tried to take control of her magic, to force it into vines again.

Don't fight it, he said into her mind. Let it go, this is what's meant to be.

She trusted him, and allowed her green magic to expand. And it did. Anchored in the solid base of his magic, hers became a powerful tree. More: it became a forest around them, more trees rising to encompass them. Trees sprouted with dark, green-black trucks and lighter green leaves. It was a product of their two magics working together, producing something greater than themselves. Such a forest had never grown in his realm before.

And then the Underworld stirred. On occasion when Hades worked his magic, it seeped into him to influence his design, and thus it tried now. He resisted it. The Underworld was a much larger force even than himself, and not one controlled by a sentient mind as such. He'd spent centuries breaking himself on the Underworld's power, until he learned to merge with it without trying to destroy either one of them. He didn't want to subject Persephone to that level of force. It had been a painful struggle to learn to use the Underworld's strength, and he tried to protect his love from that agony. She would wither before it like tender vines in a fire, maybe causing real damage to her magic. When she was stronger, when she could claim the Underworld as his Queen, then he would show her how to use the Underworld's power. But not now, when she was still so young in her abilities.

The Underworld crashed hard against him, a tidal wave striking a cliff face. It hurt, but he refused to give in to it. It felt as though his bones were grinding together as the Underworld threatened to crush him. He gritted his teeth and braced himself against his own realm. The forest he'd built with Persephone swayed as another wave of power fell upon him. He didn't understand why the Underworld was suddenly working against him. Did it resent the intrusion of another person into his heart and magic? Did it think it was protecting him, even as he stood as bulwark for Persephone?

He wouldn't be able to withstand another assault by the Underworld. He prepared to drop out of the meld to protect his love. Her tree-root magic gripped him tighter, refusing to let him go. She felt his pain, and wove a net around him to catch the power thrown against him. He panicked, knowing she wasn't strong enough to withstand against the Underworld. It would shred her, and he couldn't bear for something to happen to her. He pushed himself through her leafy net; the Underworld thundered down on him, and he shattered under its force. The power flooded through him like water rushing through rock-passages. It fell upon Persephone's magic, but instead of wrenching her away from him, it abruptly gentled and slid into her veins as softly as dew on petals. The Underworld magic soaked into hers like water on drought-starved plants, and their forest grew again.

His magic was black, providing depth and strength. Hers was green, giving life and agility. And the Underworld was light, giving definition and cohesiveness. It wove them together tighter than before, making them one. Small blue-white fruits grew from the branches of their forest, and tears sprung to Hades' eyes. He knew what it meant. The Underworld accepted Persephone as he consort, his Queen, his equal in every way. It joined with them to bless their union. The three of them wrought magic more precious still, seeming to transcend their status as gods and become part of the fabric of existence. Was there anything they could not do in that moment? They were in their own world, so entwined were they. He felt it, felt the roles cast for them: himself as father, Persephone as mother, and the Underworld as the fertile cradle to be filled. They had been given stewardship over this realm, and it accepted them as parents and guardians.

They might have stayed forever locked in that sublime plane, but Persephone, as the youngest, began to falter first. Hades and the Underworld worked together to bring her out of the meld and cushion her reentry to the normal world. The forest began to fade around them, but Hades wasn't sad to see it go. It would always reside within him, waiting for when it was needed. He blinked several times as the Underworld left him with a fond farewell. He took a deep breath, and suddenly began panting as if he hadn't breathed for hours. Maybe he hadn't. Who knew what had happened while they were bound together?

Persephone slumped over in near-exhaustion. He gathered her in his arms, curiously tired himself after such an experience. The Underworld and Persephone had both used him as a fulcrum in their magic; it was more than he'd ever channeled before. His muscles felt weak, and his skin was odd, as if it wasn't precisely his own. Persephone raised her head and met his eyes. He missed the meld with her, but in a very tangible way they were still connected. He felt whole for the first time in eons, and it was her presence that made it so.

Elysium knew what Hecate had seen while they were in the trance!

"Well," Hecate said, he voice hushed and awed, "That will be the last time I ask something of the two of you."

"I'll hold you to it," he chuckled dryly.

"If you'll excuse me, I think I'll do something safe and boring, like pearl-diving for carnivorous clams in the Phlegethon." Shaking her head, she left them.

Hades sat back, not feeling up to moving just yet. He was content to hold his goddess and recover his strength.

"We weren't that bad… were we?" Persephone asked.

He grinned. "You have no idea what we did. It's worse than you think."

"Worse?"

He sobered. "The Underworld had accepted you as my equal in every way. Hecate couldn't have predicted that when she set us up."

"Oh," she squeaked, "I… don't know what to do with that. Being your… equal… sounds big."

"It is," he agreed. "But you don't have to do anything with it, not now, at least. Just know the power is available to you, and if you ever decide to use it, I will teach you." It was her right as his future Queen, but he wouldn't push her into anything she wasn't ready for.

"Thank you," she said, "But I feel like I'm already learning everything I can at the moment. Anything more, and my mind will start to melt."

He laughed, and then kissed her. Because he could. She certainly was not complaining.

When they eventually regained their strength, they went to judging. He knew, without a doubt, that the Underworld would let her judge the souls. He said nothing at the moment, not wanting to overwhelm her all at once. He'd already missed a couple of hours, so that meant he'd have to judge through lunch for a day or two to get caught up again. It was worth it, though. To have felt Persephone's magic working on him, to see her at her chores, to play with her, to have the Underworld acknowledge its future Queen… It was worth having to work extra.

In the throne room, Hades was loath to put any distance between himself and his love. Eschewing his throne, he sat in her usual place at the base of it and placed Persephone beside him.

"Hades!" she hissed in protest, glancing around nervously. She couldn't make him rise without causing a scene, and she was unwilling to do that. There were quiet murmurs of surprise around the room at his new position. He ignored it all. So far as he was concerned, choosing Persephone didn't only mean elevating her to his level; he was willing to go to hers as well. He might not spend every judging session like this—it wasn't the most comfortable—but he would choose his love over decorum any day.

The judgements commenced. For the first time… they didn't weigh on him. The effort involved was the same, but he no longer felt flayed by the emotions he hadn't experienced. The difference was the woman at his side. Not only had she broadened his emotional spectrum, but he had the hope of someday feeling the same things as the people he judged. It was one of the few times he felt like a god among mortals, instead of a stranger looking in.

Hades might have been caught up in Persephone's presence, but not so much that he didn't notice an unusually high number of famine victims among the dead. He felt a sting of conscience. While he had been safe in his kingdom, falling in love with Persephone, Demeter had been left to face the other gods on her own. His sister was no fainting light-weight; she was one of the original six Olympians. She'd been hardened in their father's belly, and fought alongside Hades and the others in the titan war.

Still, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to send out a few shades to see how she was doing. If she needed aid, he could offer her solace in the Underworld for a time. If nothing ailed her, he could at least ask for Persephone's hand in marriage. And if, for whatever reason, Demeter was against his union with her daughter, he'd know to begin proving himself to her.

Hades and Persephone judged the dead for about three hours, working through the first part of their usual lunch time. After the morning they'd had, neither felt up to a strenuous horseback riding lesson, and they mutually decided to have a quiet lunch instead. He loved that the silence between them was comfortable. They didn't have to constantly fill the air with noise to feel appreciated by the other. Simply knowing they were together was enough.