@zxgrxus continued from (x)
When his mother came home, Zagreus had a habit of breaking out of his mental space for a few days. For the first time in months, he had tidied up his room before going to the bath, although, when he returned, he found a bundle of blankets where they most certainly should not have been.
“Peplos?” he asked, nudging it. The sheet, like a shroud, fell away to reveal a very living, very pretty child, and he went rigid in the manner he imagined his cousins did at least once a decade. He stared down at it for a very long time, the little creature with fat fingers, olive skin and his eyes, his mother’s eyes, set in a face so beautiful he couldn’t imagine whose child it was. He hadn’t thought any of his casual lovers capable of producing offspring, hence why he’d taken them up in the first place, but if his face reflected in the baby had no bearing on him, the little nubs of horns against the thin-haired baby’s head did.
“Zagreus,” he murmured to himself, staring at the baby’s face, “You’re grounded for the rest of your life.” In otherwise silence, he picked it up and intended to go find his mother - he hadn’t the faintest clue what in Tartarus to do with a baby.
---Persephone had certainly not expected this when she came home for the colder months. Rather, she had expected more of the same--she would have three children, no grandchildren, a husband, and a dog. But here was her son, standing in front of her with a baby in his arms.
She would have thought it a cruel joke had the baby not looked so much like him. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair--not a single word had left her mouth yet, although she looked at him with a great sense of disappointment. It seemed that he had certainly managed to get into trouble, even within the confines of the Underworld.
“What have you done, Zagreus?”