Persephone

A/N- Yes, I'm aware I strayed a lot from the Greek myths. Oh well, it was fun to write.

I own Cowboy Bebop and all its characters and yes, I do naughty things to them late at night.

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Her name meant destroyer of light but she was the only light he'd ever seen before. Persephone, dragged down from that godforsaken plain. She screamed like she enjoyed it, the way he grabbed her wrists and ankles and forced her down. Forced her so far down she could never claw her way back up to where she belonged. He had to have that light so bad.

They say Hades was all dark eyes and white face with spiderweb veins and sighs crawling from underneath his fingertips. Black sheep blood and heads banging from above ground. They tried not to look at him and when they prayed they wouldn't speak his name. Vicious told her to pray to him and she cried his name out loud. She was a white bird underneath a black coat. All thin and pale and unafraid, but she got to be his bride, so why should she be? Julia. Persephone with her wheat colored hair, she was a goddess and then she was a demon.

Persephone let Eurydice go but made Adonis stay.

When she got bitten by that snake and Cheron dragged her across that dark river he didn't even demand a coin. Took her so fast. So Orpheus made Hades cry- and Hades never cried- he wept dark tears and Persephone made him let Eurydice go. Persephone was bitten by that snake-dragon, that red dragon, so maybe she was Eurydice and Persephone and Julia all at once but there was no Orpheus to save her.

But there was Adonis. In the story Adonis is a baby but Julia saw him as a man with the face of a child. Or maybe the heart. Spike was the only one in hell with a heart. Julia had lost hers a long time ago- Hades sucked it out with his own mouth- and Vicious never had one to begin with, or maybe his was caked in so much blood and deceit and steel it wasn't worth anything by that point.

She made him stay.

He wanted out before he got in but he saw her face and he knew he had to stay. So he lit his cigarette and barred his heart- he still had that- off with his gun like everyone else and he stayed. And Hades-Vicious still dangled her off from his fingertips and he still made her scream, but Adonis made it that much more bearable for her.

It was the pomegranate seeds, those goddamn seeds. Seven of them- he fed her seeds that looked like rubies or stones because she was hungry, and nobody warned her that after tasting his seeds she'd have to stay his forever. They looked like jewels or maybe blood soaked pebbles- the candy of hell- he placed them in her mouth himself! The sweetest fruit she'd ever tasted. Blew her jaw off faster than any one of his guns ever could.

He fed her and touched her and he created her, with his hands- his spiderweb hands- with his hands he formed her face, formed those perfect lips and fingertips and even the breast Adonis himself rested on. And so even without the seeds she was his.

And she could never leave him.

Persephone was tied to Hell and so Julia was tied to Him. There was nothing she could do.

She used to be a bird but now she was a beast. Beast, bird. Blood. Blood red seeds. The only light he'd ever seen. He left bruises on her inner thighs and on the edges of her lips. And then he told her not to cry.

He told her not to cry but he wouldn't call it love.

She used to be a bird but now she was a beast.

Adonis saw and tried to pull her away but it was too late. Blood red seeds. She asked about his eyes and he said one saw a colored past. And the other one? He said his other eye saw the future. He said the other eye saw her! But she couldn't leave with him. She said his eyes looked red that night. Like the drug.

Like the seeds.

She knew she could never truly leave but after Adonis died- they took him away- after Adonis died she flew away, too. Just like a bird. She knew she'd have to return and she did, they both did. They did because they had to. Because they were birds together, birds and gods. Birds and gods.

And when they returned they knew it would be for the last time.

You cannot kill the king of hell but you can try and fly away from him.

And when the gunshot rang out she knew she wasn't Persephone anymore, and she wasn't Eurydice, and she wasn't His.

And the only regret she ever had was that she couldn't see his eyes that day, she couldn't see his pomegranate eyes, all she could see was birds and blood.

Birds and blood.