[ maybe bellamy hadn't been so far off when he'd been telling raven he wouldn't be able to recognise her without blood and dirt smeared on her face and her red jacket. he wears a dark blue shirt, the same colour as the one he'd worn on their ground, but without the blood and dirt to accessorise his look. with a tray with two cups of coffee from one of the coffee shops, tucked beneath his arm is a very brand new book on mythology he'd thought to duck into a shop and buy on his walk to raven's. ]
[ he doesn't think about texting her to tell her he's arrived. he doesn't even think to try her door and see if its open for him. even though he can spare a hand and ring the doorbell, he holds the tray with the two drinks in one hand and chooses to knock an odd rhythm against her door. ]
[She doesn't wash her face for him. She had just gotten off work before texting him about Loki's existence, the thought hitting her out of the blue in the shower; platonically, definitely a platonic shower thought given that all it was was oh I never bragged to Bellamy about that. So her face is clean and her hair is clean and still damp because Raven doesn't believe in hairdriers in this weather, and it's not because he's coming over.
Him coming over, that's not a weird either, she tells herself. It wouldn't be the first time he's taken up space on her couch. And she hasn't questioned it before, not once, because she likes the company -- his company, even. Mostly. Mostly his company. He's among the very few who have seen the inside of her apartment, the others being Hiccup and Annie Cresta that one night they couldn't sleep and ended up watching movies with the dog. And he's definitely the only one she's invited over with the line hold hands or whatever.
Not that she's in a rush, but if he were -- hugging Bellamy wouldn't be terrible.
If he could ring the fucking bell. She sighs and pushes away from her worktable, going to open the door. Clean face, clean clothes, clean hair - and hair definitely down, so it air dries even.]
Oh, good. [She grabs the coffee out of his hand and steps aside to let him pass inside. And before the awkwardness, launches,]
[ bellamy figures that at the end of the day here, they're always going to go their separate ways. as much as he wants to keep octavia close, he recognises she's not necessarily a kid anymore, even if she still technically is. she's had a year without him, the very same one he'd spent without her, and although he very much sees his little sister in her, she's grown older and harder. a part of him had tried to smother that when they'd first dropped on the earth. now, he just wants to see it blossom. ]
[ what bellamy knows he can't stand is his own apartment. it's so quiet and eery, unlike his tent where he'd been able to hear the kids outside, yelling and laughing and even whispering while on duty. camp life had always been loud with the cracks of twigs and the fire crackling somewhere nearby. but eudio is quiet. it's like mount weather, sometimes haunting, sometimes on the verge of being deceptively cosy. maybe he'll come to like his solitude, but, for now, bellamy's kind of grateful for an invitation to escape. it doesn't hurt at all that it's at raven's, either. spending time with her outside of the warzone is ... nice. ]
[ but he chooses not to ring the doorbell to only irritate her, if she even cares at all about him opting to knock instead. he notices her hair, wet and down. he's only ever really seen her hair down when she'd come to his tent, as if removing it from its ponytail would make him see less of the mechanic and more of the girl who hid behind her tinkering of radios and bombs. but she's never needed to do that; it's just different, how she looks, without her hair pulled up and away from her face. ]
[ as soon as she takes the coffees from him, he steps inside, grabbing the book from where it's tucked beneath his arm and holding it by his side. even though she'd given him a hint as to why she'd wanted him to come over, he still finds himself a little surprised (and a little grateful) at the abruptness. he may feel a little awkward, but it dissipates as quickly as it arises. his smile is small before he even answers her, ] Yeah. He's a big deal. He and his brothers overthrew his dad, and they claimed the bigger areas to rule over. He got the basement.
[See? Easy. Slip into the story and he forgets to ask why she asked, and she doesn't have to tell him she thought of him when she felt a little bit lonely. Easy. Arguably cowardly.
Whatever. She picks one cup of coffee that she deems will be hers, and even though it's near dusk, she drinks it anyway.]
Sounds like a great family that one. So what, is he all alone in the basement with his three-headed dog?
[ bellamy smiles, shaking his head. unbeknownst to him, he falls almost too eagerly into her trap. he had thought to ask her of why she'd even wanted to know, but had thought maybe it had been curiosity getting the better of her about the stories he'd told her on his very first night here. ]
[ the story of hades and persephone is one that he likes, given that hades seems to be the only god who understands what commitment truly entails. he doesn't think to tell raven that as it may just tangle everything up for her if he goes on and on and on about zeus and poseidon. ] He had a wife. Persephone.
[ unlike her, he doesn't drink his coffee. instead, he moves toward a table to place it on the surface along with the book. he leans against the edge of it, folding his arms against his chest, as he faces her. ] She lived with him for half the year. [ his brows crinkle as he tries to remember. ] That was usually during winter, when the land was dead. [ and after speaking to elsa of hades and persehone and demeter accompanied by the season of winter, he thinks to tack on: ] Her mother was the harvest goddess, and she mourned for her daughter whenever she was in the Underworld with Hades.
[A wife. Raven doesn't know the weight of that word, not more than she knows the weight of it in the context of Greek mythology. But for whatever's worth, and for whatever she has heard and maybe even read a little about Hades, it's probably okay that he had someone other than the dog there with him. Loneliness and death make bad bedfellows.]
So what? [Dots being connected fast.] She makes the harvest wither away because she can't handle her daughter being away? Lady gets six months, that's -- weren't married couples supposed to live together?
[ he bows his head, amused. ] It's not that simple. [ nothing ever is — he supposes raven might come to see that with the greek gods if she's to find herself too curious to simply leave it at that. bellamy grips the edges of the table he leans against as he tries to figure out the best way to tackle a rather convoluted love story. ]
[ he looks up at her. ] Each story differs. But the one that's pretty prevalent with them is that Hades kidnapped Persephone. She was in the fields one day and Hades, on one of his rare trips upstairs, saw her and fell for her. Love at first sight. [ he shrugs at that. he doesn't really believe in it, but he's seen some people fall head over heels for a pretty face. finn had been that very person, but bellamy doesn't really give much of a shit about the love affairs of the original hundred. ]
The earth opened up and swallowed them whole. Demeter, Persephone's mother, was rightfully pissed. She threatened to make the earth barren forever if she didn't find her daughter. Which is serious, since if there's nothing growing on the earth, humankind's screwed.
She went searching for her everywhere and asked a goddess where her daughter was. [ and maybe it's easier to keep that goddess out of the equation for now, since hecate doesn't really matter in this. keeping it simple for raven is simultaneously difficult and simple. he does what his mother never did — leave a few names out so she can't get too caught up with the tangents. ] The two of them went to Helius, the sun god. He sees everything on Earth, so, he was able to tell them Hades took her. But he approved of Hades as a husband for Persephone. Unsurprisingly, Demeter wouldn't listen.
There's no real way to get to the Underworld unless you're dead or Hermes, the god of travellers. So, Demeter was kind of screwed. She decided to be pissed at the earth and brought on a famine that lasted a year. So, Zeus, the god in the sky and Hades' brother, decided to send Hermes down to the Underworld to get Persephone back, because everyone would be dead if this continued. He went down there and Hades said okay. [ bellamy shrugs his shoulders. aurora had told him he'd shrugged his shoulders, caring really little by such a proposal. he finds himself imitating it, even if raven doesn't know why. ] Just like that. He'd let her go. Persephone hadn't eaten anything while she was in the Underworld, and so he asked her, before she'd go, if she wanted to eat something. She was really hungry, so you'd think the guy was just giving a shit.
Except if you eat the food of Hades, you've got to stay in the Underworld forever. And Persephone ate a pomegranate seed.
But Rhea — she was a Titan and the mother of Zeus, Demeter, and Hades — decided to put her foot down and proposed that Persephone stay in the Underworld for part of every year. She ate the food. [ bellamy shakes his head. ] You can't really break that rule.
Some of the stories have Persephone willingly eating some food in the Underworld, but I like the one where she's stubborn and wants to stick it to Hades for kidnapping her in the first place. Persephone's kind of cool. [ that's a tangent, though. ] But Demeter was happy in the end, and that's all that mattered. Whenever Persephone came back to the earth, it would be fertile and beautiful. When Persephone had to go back to the Underworld, it'd be cold and barren. They might be husband and wife, but that's why they had to live the way they did. To keep everyone happy and the world living. [ his smile becomes wide. ] And to give everyone a break in the Underworld from Persephone. She was a badass.
[Love at first sight isn't a concept Raven likes hearing about. Never was. When she fell for Finn it had happened slowly, over the years, and then all at once and with this idea of forever in her mind because it had felt right. Love at first sight is the sort of stupidity that ends years of solid relationship in ten days, the sort that leaves one person thinking what she didn't have that the other one did, and why --
Fuck love at first sight, basically.
She sits down on the small two-seat couch with her coffee and just lets him go on with the story. Those are a lot of names, but she can handle rocket science; what are a few names anyway? She wonders if it mattered what Persephone thought of the whole marriage, or if it was just one of those things Hades decided he was entitled to as a big guy. Or if it mattered at all that Persephone had to switch homes every six months to keep Hades happy and her mom happy. Or if it mattered at all what she wanted, when every fucking god in the universe was giving her orders.]
She doesn't sound like it. [She shrugs,] Demeter wants Persephone back so Persephone goes back. Helios approves of the marriage, not that Persephone asked for his opinion. Rhea gave Persephone orders, not that it matter. And dickhead Hades keeps her starved on his domain for a whole year and then tricks her into having to stay by offering her food that keeps her there? Fuck the harvest, did anyone ask Persephone what she wanted, in these stories?
[ is bellamy surprised raven nitpicks at all of that? he isn't. unfortunately, the greek myths don't give him all the answers, but maybe he can satisfy her own irritation at the treatment of a goddess by telling her what he knows — and the versions he favours. he listens and looks at her all too amused, with practiced patience, like maybe o had gone on similar rants and questioning back on the ark. ]
Not much is known about Persephone before her abduction. [ he shrugs his shoulders, a little helpless. ] A lot of these gods and goddesses get treated like shit, Raven. But Persephone actually gets a pretty good deal out of it. She's not some helpless goddess who got tricked by a god. She was the one everyone who went to the Underworld dreaded pissing off. Odysseus was this great king and hero, and he was afraid of her, not Hades.
There's a version of the story — the one that I like — that describes Persephone going hungry out of stubbornness or spite. Here's Hades, the god of the Underworld, he is the king of death, Raven. There's absolutely no one more powerful than him when it comes to death. And this vegetation goddess, who was known as [ he does do the airquotes. ] "the maiden" and nothing more, refuses to eat.
I guess they grew to love one another because Persephone actually looked forward to being with Hades. That's what some of the stories say. [ he shrugs. ] Persephone was treated like shit, but she was more feared than her husband.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i have questions about hades anyway
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Sure. I like Hades. I'll try and answer them.
But we don't have to hold hands.
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so we just hang out without the impeding doom of war
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Swap war for fresh clothes. You might need to put a name badge on. I could barely recognize you at the fair without you being covered in dirt.
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and clean hair
amazing
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i'm going to stop replying since you can't multitask texting and walking apparently
bring coffee
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[ don't even bother answering that. ]
Fine. My hands are going to be full. Don't clean your face while waiting for me.
action;
[ he doesn't think about texting her to tell her he's arrived. he doesn't even think to try her door and see if its open for him. even though he can spare a hand and ring the doorbell, he holds the tray with the two drinks in one hand and chooses to knock an odd rhythm against her door. ]
action;
Him coming over, that's not a weird either, she tells herself. It wouldn't be the first time he's taken up space on her couch. And she hasn't questioned it before, not once, because she likes the company -- his company, even. Mostly. Mostly his company. He's among the very few who have seen the inside of her apartment, the others being Hiccup and Annie Cresta that one night they couldn't sleep and ended up watching movies with the dog. And he's definitely the only one she's invited over with the line hold hands or whatever.
Not that she's in a rush, but if he were -- hugging Bellamy wouldn't be terrible.
If he could ring the fucking bell. She sighs and pushes away from her worktable, going to open the door. Clean face, clean clothes, clean hair - and hair definitely down, so it air dries even.]
Oh, good. [She grabs the coffee out of his hand and steps aside to let him pass inside. And before the awkwardness, launches,]
So Hades is the god of the dead, right?
action;
[ what bellamy knows he can't stand is his own apartment. it's so quiet and eery, unlike his tent where he'd been able to hear the kids outside, yelling and laughing and even whispering while on duty. camp life had always been loud with the cracks of twigs and the fire crackling somewhere nearby. but eudio is quiet. it's like mount weather, sometimes haunting, sometimes on the verge of being deceptively cosy. maybe he'll come to like his solitude, but, for now, bellamy's kind of grateful for an invitation to escape. it doesn't hurt at all that it's at raven's, either. spending time with her outside of the warzone is ... nice. ]
[ but he chooses not to ring the doorbell to only irritate her, if she even cares at all about him opting to knock instead. he notices her hair, wet and down. he's only ever really seen her hair down when she'd come to his tent, as if removing it from its ponytail would make him see less of the mechanic and more of the girl who hid behind her tinkering of radios and bombs. but she's never needed to do that; it's just different, how she looks, without her hair pulled up and away from her face. ]
[ as soon as she takes the coffees from him, he steps inside, grabbing the book from where it's tucked beneath his arm and holding it by his side. even though she'd given him a hint as to why she'd wanted him to come over, he still finds himself a little surprised (and a little grateful) at the abruptness. he may feel a little awkward, but it dissipates as quickly as it arises. his smile is small before he even answers her, ] Yeah. He's a big deal. He and his brothers overthrew his dad, and they claimed the bigger areas to rule over. He got the basement.
action;
Whatever. She picks one cup of coffee that she deems will be hers, and even though it's near dusk, she drinks it anyway.]
Sounds like a great family that one. So what, is he all alone in the basement with his three-headed dog?
action;
[ the story of hades and persephone is one that he likes, given that hades seems to be the only god who understands what commitment truly entails. he doesn't think to tell raven that as it may just tangle everything up for her if he goes on and on and on about zeus and poseidon. ] He had a wife. Persephone.
[ unlike her, he doesn't drink his coffee. instead, he moves toward a table to place it on the surface along with the book. he leans against the edge of it, folding his arms against his chest, as he faces her. ] She lived with him for half the year. [ his brows crinkle as he tries to remember. ] That was usually during winter, when the land was dead. [ and after speaking to elsa of hades and persehone and demeter accompanied by the season of winter, he thinks to tack on: ] Her mother was the harvest goddess, and she mourned for her daughter whenever she was in the Underworld with Hades.
action;
So what? [Dots being connected fast.] She makes the harvest wither away because she can't handle her daughter being away? Lady gets six months, that's -- weren't married couples supposed to live together?
action;
[ he looks up at her. ] Each story differs. But the one that's pretty prevalent with them is that Hades kidnapped Persephone. She was in the fields one day and Hades, on one of his rare trips upstairs, saw her and fell for her. Love at first sight. [ he shrugs at that. he doesn't really believe in it, but he's seen some people fall head over heels for a pretty face. finn had been that very person, but bellamy doesn't really give much of a shit about the love affairs of the original hundred. ]
The earth opened up and swallowed them whole. Demeter, Persephone's mother, was rightfully pissed. She threatened to make the earth barren forever if she didn't find her daughter. Which is serious, since if there's nothing growing on the earth, humankind's screwed.
She went searching for her everywhere and asked a goddess where her daughter was. [ and maybe it's easier to keep that goddess out of the equation for now, since hecate doesn't really matter in this. keeping it simple for raven is simultaneously difficult and simple. he does what his mother never did — leave a few names out so she can't get too caught up with the tangents. ] The two of them went to Helius, the sun god. He sees everything on Earth, so, he was able to tell them Hades took her. But he approved of Hades as a husband for Persephone. Unsurprisingly, Demeter wouldn't listen.
There's no real way to get to the Underworld unless you're dead or Hermes, the god of travellers. So, Demeter was kind of screwed. She decided to be pissed at the earth and brought on a famine that lasted a year. So, Zeus, the god in the sky and Hades' brother, decided to send Hermes down to the Underworld to get Persephone back, because everyone would be dead if this continued. He went down there and Hades said okay. [ bellamy shrugs his shoulders. aurora had told him he'd shrugged his shoulders, caring really little by such a proposal. he finds himself imitating it, even if raven doesn't know why. ] Just like that. He'd let her go. Persephone hadn't eaten anything while she was in the Underworld, and so he asked her, before she'd go, if she wanted to eat something. She was really hungry, so you'd think the guy was just giving a shit.
Except if you eat the food of Hades, you've got to stay in the Underworld forever. And Persephone ate a pomegranate seed.
But Rhea — she was a Titan and the mother of Zeus, Demeter, and Hades — decided to put her foot down and proposed that Persephone stay in the Underworld for part of every year. She ate the food. [ bellamy shakes his head. ] You can't really break that rule.
Some of the stories have Persephone willingly eating some food in the Underworld, but I like the one where she's stubborn and wants to stick it to Hades for kidnapping her in the first place. Persephone's kind of cool. [ that's a tangent, though. ] But Demeter was happy in the end, and that's all that mattered. Whenever Persephone came back to the earth, it would be fertile and beautiful. When Persephone had to go back to the Underworld, it'd be cold and barren. They might be husband and wife, but that's why they had to live the way they did. To keep everyone happy and the world living. [ his smile becomes wide. ] And to give everyone a break in the Underworld from Persephone. She was a badass.
action;
Fuck love at first sight, basically.
She sits down on the small two-seat couch with her coffee and just lets him go on with the story. Those are a lot of names, but she can handle rocket science; what are a few names anyway? She wonders if it mattered what Persephone thought of the whole marriage, or if it was just one of those things Hades decided he was entitled to as a big guy. Or if it mattered at all that Persephone had to switch homes every six months to keep Hades happy and her mom happy. Or if it mattered at all what she wanted, when every fucking god in the universe was giving her orders.]
She doesn't sound like it. [She shrugs,] Demeter wants Persephone back so Persephone goes back. Helios approves of the marriage, not that Persephone asked for his opinion. Rhea gave Persephone orders, not that it matter. And dickhead Hades keeps her starved on his domain for a whole year and then tricks her into having to stay by offering her food that keeps her there? Fuck the harvest, did anyone ask Persephone what she wanted, in these stories?
action;
Not much is known about Persephone before her abduction. [ he shrugs his shoulders, a little helpless. ] A lot of these gods and goddesses get treated like shit, Raven. But Persephone actually gets a pretty good deal out of it. She's not some helpless goddess who got tricked by a god. She was the one everyone who went to the Underworld dreaded pissing off. Odysseus was this great king and hero, and he was afraid of her, not Hades.
There's a version of the story — the one that I like — that describes Persephone going hungry out of stubbornness or spite. Here's Hades, the god of the Underworld, he is the king of death, Raven. There's absolutely no one more powerful than him when it comes to death. And this vegetation goddess, who was known as [ he does do the airquotes. ] "the maiden" and nothing more, refuses to eat.
I guess they grew to love one another because Persephone actually looked forward to being with Hades. That's what some of the stories say. [ he shrugs. ] Persephone was treated like shit, but she was more feared than her husband.
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