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Her eyes burned long after the tears dried up, unable to shed another. She couldn’t bring herself to tear her eyes from his immobile body, not when she heard twigs snapping underfoot in the trees, nor when she felt she might collapse with exhaustion. She barely allowed herself to blink, fearing that as soon as her eyes shut he would disappear, disintegrate, decompose between one second and the next.
She didn’t move again until the sky lightened to a pale pink as the sun started it’s daily rise. The pink became brighter, tinting everything for just a moment before the sky changed to an innocently brilliant blue. Slowly, stiff from not moving for hours, she leaned forward onto her hands and knees, barely feeling the sharp rocks that cut into her palms and already tender knees.
Her arms gave out with every step as she crawled through the grass to him, but she wouldn’t stop moving forward. She couldn’t stop until she reached him; until she properly buried him.
Even if took her another hour to get to him. Even if it took a lifetime.
When she finally did stop she was only inches away, close enough that she could faintly smell him under the tangy blood covering his body. The salty smell of the ocean that clung to his hair, his clothes, his skin, was so faint she could have been imagining it, willing it into existence.
As she leaned over him she was careful not touch to him – touching him would make this all too real. Tears nicked her eyes, slid over her cheeks, puffy and sore from crying throughout the night, and dripped onto the open wound that had been his neck. She watched the salty droplets blend with the blood, the water tinted red as it washed bits of it away in a thin stream down the side, drip, drip, dripping to the grass.
A new wave of sobs crested and wretched through her chest; her lips pulled back from her teeth in agony, drool pooling at the corners of her mouth and draining down the sides of her chin. She grasped and pulled at her hair, scratching her scalp with her nails to feel anything else.
It was impossible to feel anything but the agony ripping a hole through her chest.
Still sobbing, she dropped her body gently beside his, wrapping herself around him. Burying her face in his familiar shoulder, ignoring the blood covering every inch of his paled skin. She breathed him in, hoping the smell of the ocean wasn’t all in her head, but blood and dirt and death were the only scents filling her nose.
As Persephone clung to him, holding his cold body tight against her own, she realized she had one other option; possibly two.
She was going to ask her mother, her father and all of the Olympians to help her. To help Pelops. Bring him back to live out his years, years he deserved to live and laugh and love, hunt and fight and cry. Years that had been stolen from him by some wild insatiable animal.
They would say yes. She would not give them a choice. They would bring him back because if they didn’t, she had only one other option…
It was a foul, foolish option that would likely leave her forever indebted to the Infernal King and end her own life if she wanted to save Pelops’. He wouldn’t kill her, not in the mortal way that humans die, but the life she lived now would be over and she would be forced to comply with whatever he asked. He had a pitiless heart and a mind for cruelty hidden beneath those velvet black curls.
As much as she despised him, as much as she loathed his presence, Persephone had often daydreamed about running her fingers through his hair and feeling the silky strands fall between her fingers.
Thankfully, the barrenness lurking behind his eyes and coating his voice always brought her back to her senses, reminding her of the vicious acts he loved to commit. The lives he ended and tortured with a cruel smile on his face. Unflinching.
But he was still a better option than losing Pelops. Better than never seeing his face light up when he had a successful hunt or his eyes twinkle when he smiled at her.
At least that’s what she told herself as she unraveled her limbs from his body to clean her face as best she could, wiping the dried blood – his dried blood – from her cheek. She couldn’t afford to use any of her power not when she’d need whatever strength she had left to get them both to Olympus.
She struggled to get him into her arms, either because she was still weak from drinking wine all day and sleeping on the ground, and then not sleeping at all the following night. Or, more likely, because she was still crying, still shaking so badly that Pelops’ body trembled in her arms, flakes of dried blood drifting to the grass.
“I’m sorry,” she said into his hair, throwing his arms over her shoulders and leaning down to grasp his legs behind his knees. Wrapping them around her middle wasn’t easy, every time she had one hooked onto her hip, the other would slide back down her leg. He was too slick with blood—or maybe she was.
It would have to be enough, his arms slung limply around her neck and a single leg balanced on her cocked hip.
“It’s okay,” she said to herself, her breathing ragged from holding up his body weight. Chanting it to convince herself, “it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay,” as she pictured them in the golden hall of Olympus. Imagined feeling the warmth that radiated from the hearth in its center, the glorious thrones and cold stares of the gods as she asked them to perform a miracle, to do something they would surely refuse.
When she opened her eyes, more than ready to gently drop Pelops to the marble floors, she was still facing the trees of the meadow. The sky was still above them, the clouds drifting aimlessly past the sun, blocking his heat for moments at a time.
She wiped the sweat daring to drip into her eyes from her brows, the blood on the back of her hand colouring her forehead.
“MaDia,” she cursed breathlessly. She would have to fly them there. All the way to Olympus.
She whimpered, pushing up on Pelops’ butt to help her grip him harder.
Flying was her least favourite way to travel. The speed made her head spin and she was rarely able to keep the contents of her stomach in her stomach. Once the nausea was so sudden and so awful that she puked all over Zeus’ feet, the liquid seeping between his toes and into the crooks of his sandals.
Needless to say, she was banned from flying to Olympus. That would not stop her today.
She ran to take-off, gaining as much speed as she could while carrying a fully-grown man in her arms. It was weak, and she just barely grazed the tops of the trees as they gained air, the top-most branches scratching her toes.
Pelops felt heavier in her arms, and the breeze she had attempted to summon to ease his weight barely blew the tendrils of hair flying into her face. The wind whipped around them, her own hair flying around their heads, wrapping and smacking around her face, covering her eyes.
She couldn’t afford to remove a hand from holding Pelops, so she flew by memory, praying to Zeus that no birds obstructed her path. She wasn’t sure they would be able to get air-borne again if they hit a bird and flew off track, down toward the ground.
