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She started towards the door, but Thanatos stopped her.
“It’s messy, Persephone,” he stated, the concern deepening in his voice. “The mortal has
several gunshot wounds, but I read intentions along his soul line.”
Persephone felt an itch at the back of her mind of other souls who had come to her realm after committing such an act. People who died of suicide usually passed into her realm not knowing someone loved them. Once they met the judges and felt the pain of the loved ones left behind, they begged to go back. Persephone could not restore their lifeline, which tore at her even if no one ever knew it. Sometimes a soul was so close to the living realm and could be sent back for a second chance.
Something that never happened as much as she preferred.
She wished there were ways she could intervene, but even the Goddess of the Underworld was limited to the rules of the universe. She couldn’t heal the souls while they lived, but she was their caretaker in death. Their guardian.
Death could not create life, no matter how much she wished she could.
The mortal in the room before her had intended to end their life. Perhaps they were murdered before they had the chance to complete the act, but it did not matter. His intentions to end his own life would color his judgment in the Underworld.
The most worrisome part of all this was that she had a strong suspicion she knew who was behind that door.
Pushing past her nerves, she pulled the door open with her free hand and stepped into a room that smelled strongly of blood.
She continued inside to see the body laid across an old plaid couch.
Him.
It was obvious someone had been working desperately to save him. Discarded bloody cloths and gauze were scattered around the room. Some still rested on his bloody torso, where his shirt had been torn open. He didn’t receive his killing blow here, she knew, but this was where he was brought by someone to administer first aid. On a rickety wooden coffee table, a handbook laid open to a page on wound care. A military pack lay forgotten in the corner, contents strewn across the floor. Then she caught sight of the gun lying next to the pack.
A weapon he would have used to take his life had someone else not done it for him, she surmised.
Looking around the almost pitch-black room, Persephone had no issue seeing the soul pacing on the other side of it. Souls had an internal light. Their life energy hung around them even after they passed the gates. They faded away with time if they were not escorted to the other realm. The stress and agitation she often saw with the newly dead surrounded the soul as well.
Turning to Thanatos, Persephone tried to ignore the soul in the shadows. To gather herself before she went to him and looked into his eyes once again after so many years. She felt the soul deep pain emanating from him.
“Please tell Charon I am bringing this soul to him myself,” Persephone whispered to Thanatos.
As she steeled herself to face the soul, she felt Thanatos’ power leave the mortal realm. She was alone now with the one who had called to her for so very long.
“Stop,” she ordered. Her Goddess voice sent the word as a deep echo, her power rippling across the space between them to disrupt his frantic pacing. The soul looked up, and she found herself struck mute by the nothingness she saw.
There was no missed future within his eyes. All his previous mortal shells had held missed opportunities and futures.
This was a new and troubling development.
Persephone took in the rest of him as he ran his transparent hands through his dark blonde hair. A scar ran through his left eyebrow and extended to his temple. His nose looked to have been broken once or twice, but it hardly detracted from his handsome face, slightly oval but with a defined jaw. He had a bit of cleft chin, which made his face even more attractive.
She could see through his torn shirt scars that crossed over his abdomen, like roads running between and around his bullet wounds. Wounds still dripping with blood. He must’ve held on for a while after obtaining his mortal blow since the body had not been dead as long as Persephone had assumed. No one who was working to help revive him was in the room, but she heard a soft whimper from somewhere down the hall.
He was silent as she walked towards him. Reaching out her hand, she used her Goddess voice again to tell him to halt. His body finally stopped, but without his control. He stared at her hand, which she kept human as not to scare him with her claws. She needed him to look at her again, look her in the eyes one more time, but instead he stared at the glimmering string between them.
Looking at her right hand, the one she held out to him, it seemed as if he was trying to piece together an impossible puzzle. Their eyes finally met again, and she caught the most beautiful, piercing green eyes she had ever seen on a human. They appeared almost back lit. Were they this green just a moment ago? She could have sworn they were brown, or maybe hazel?
Persephone blinked. Establishing a psychic connection with a soul did not involve being distracted by a striking pair of eyes. She focused again, reaching into the deepest part of his soul until she was immersed in his feelings and memories of his mortal life.
She trembled at the energy that pulsated from him as she unraveled the soul’s immortality. Their connection flared, and she got what she needed. Not his future, but his past. His life until now played out before her in brief glimpses, nothing to tell her the full nature of him, but she already knew this soul was him.
Her mortal warrior.
Persephone watched the moments that made up the genuine goodness of a person. Mortals always underestimated these moments that caused a ripple effect much larger than they could ever know. Still, she noted, no future. As if he was never meant to have one.
Then it hit her all at once and took her breath away. This was the soul’s end. No reincarnation.
