The galaxy is a dark and lonely place. “First Strike Diplomacy” reigns out of fear. Few species survive even 300 years after developing interstellar travel. When humans entered the galaxy, we were the first species confident enough in war to ask someone “Are you sure you want to do this?”
There was no menace in the she-demon's words. She held no hatred in her eyes, or doubt in heart. Worst of all, the fear that should have been plaguing the she-demons thoughts was replaced with pity.
Ka'a had ordered the act of war and had witnessed the aftermath on Humanity. By any other standards, it would have been marked as a success. Humanity had called for a meeting. Ka'a had prepared for whatever the outcome of such a meeting would be. Surrender would be the most likely outcome, war would be the most preferred. The she-demon asking if Ka'a was 'sure', was not one of them.
"We are a war-species."
It should have been answer enough. It should have struck the absent fear into her heart with all the force of a supernova. The she-demon only smiled pitifully at Ka'a.
The she-demon leaned in, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"We have reigned as champions for generations. Species like you are nothing to us."
"You're a war-species? Then know your enemy. We are a species of death and decimation. We perfected war when we were still young and then we chose peace."
The she-demon's confidence was mirrored by her companions. Ka'a leaned away. Suddenly, they weren't as secure in their position surrounded by the universe's strongest army.
"So," the she-demon leaned back casually, "are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"
I want to walk by the street. I want to be the first to the door. I want to tell you how you look. I want to be the one who holds you. I want to watch after you in the way that he doesn't.
Okay, hear me out I just shotgunned this WIP and I'm dying to have this fic blowup. Basically, The Problem is kept a secret from the 'real' world and Lucy shows signs of having the incredible ability to see and interact with ghosts. It's really good and everyone even remotely interested in 'Lockwood and Co.' should read it immediately. The description is a bit vague, but it's well worth the read.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Everyone in your circle of friends is a secret vampire hunter, except for you. They’re being smug about it, but you can’t tell them that you are secretly fighting against eldritch horrors.
*AN: I've absolutely zero experience in coming out, and still struggle with my sexuality. If things feel a bit off, please attribute this as inexperience not willful negligence. Thank you.*
Bucky was allergic to commitment. He was a serial dater and a chronic bachelor. Those were just a few of the phrases that the future had adopted.
His mother had called him doll dizzy even before he’d really understood what it meant. His father had been the same way, his grandfather reassured her fondly. He’d find a skirt that would pin him down eventually, Bucky’s father agreed, just like his mother did him. Bucky knew that his mother prayed that he wouldn’t get some poor girl in the family way at night when his father had gone to sleep and he was sneaking out.
At the time, it had just been something that boys did before settling down with a nice girl. Maybe it wasn’t something to grandstand, but he didn’t catch any flak for it either. And it wasn’t like he was an anchor clanker. No way would he ever be so callous as to jump from one girl to the next without a care as to who was dating who or who was whose sister. It was ungentleman-like and, while she might not approve, he was his momma's son.
It wasn’t uncommon for girls to accuse him of liking the chase more than the dame, but that never quite felt right. Sure, the chase was fun. Planning everything out, figuring out the best way to woo this one so that he’d score a date for Steve too; there was a sort of pride that came with success. But the chase wasn’t nearly as intoxicating as the intimacy of being with a pretty dame made up just for him.
And when he meant intimacy, he meant intimacy. The sex was good - and not just for him - but it always seemed to come second to just being with someone. So, when the pretty dames started talking about going the family way, it soured things. He was the oldest of his siblings and had experience in helping out with babies when his mother was exhausted, and he didn’t hate it. It just… didn’t feel like something he wanted to try to have.Â
Especially not if he was expected to participate the way his father did. Which was to say, just enough to keep them wanting his approval. It was probably the fact that he wanted approval from his father that he became a skirt chaser. Albeit a very careful one, for his mother’s sanity.
Then war came and he’d had the brotherly intimacy of having a whole gaggle of boys to look after and be the best sergeant he could be for them. Strangely enough, he didn’t miss sex. He never said it but he didn’t. Whenever talk would arise of girls waiting back home, he knew all of the right words to say but they felt empty.Â
A great deal of his letters came from his sister, Becca, and his mother. Steve wrote every now and again, but that wasn’t unexpected. While they hadn’t parted on bad terms, Bucky had definitely cursed the day his draft came in the mail. But the war was nearly over and they wouldn’t be apart for too long. He’d take out Adolf Hitler himself if he had to.Â
But none of Bucky’s perceived future was to be. There was the blip of bright light when he’d fought alongside Steve and the other Howling Commandos, when it seemed that they really would end the war with a handful of men. Then the dark cloud of the next seventy years would hold his memories in a tight grip, loosening only when it had come down to shooting the last person who knew him before he was a monster.
The years following nearly killing his best friend were hard and only marginally brighter than the shadows of his own memories. He was exhausted all the time, even as his body was rearing for a good knock-down-drag-out. It was a crippling combination that therapy helped him work through.Therapy held so much stigma that it took him a while to crack open, but when he did it was almost amazing how much better he felt. He still talked to Steve about the deep stuff, but it felt good to just spew all of the nasty, irrational stuff that he knew was irrational to someone that he didn’t share such a long history with.
When Bucky had gotten back up on the dating horse, it had been an accident. All he’d done was ask a girl out to lunch at a place down the street that neither had been to before and it had turned into a three week long misunderstanding that might’ve been comical if he hadn’t been so shocked when she’d jumped his bones. While it wasn’t the definition of hookup culture, it had been his introduction to it. He’d thought that they were just being friendly and she’d thought he was just waiting for her to make the first move.
It was awkward walking back home to Steve and his shared apartment, thoughts swirling around in his head. It wasn’t that he’d completely missed any potential cues she’d no doubt broadcasted to the whole world, it was how he’d never even considered it. The more he thought on it, the more he realized that since he’d became Bucky Barnes again and shed the Winter Soldier persona, sex hadn’t even occured to him.Â
When he talked to Steve the next day, Steve had said that he thought Bucky was taking things slow but if he was really worried about it, they could go see a doctor. Bucky didn’t think he was worried per say, just surprised and maybe a smidge relieved. He still felt like himself and hadn’t even noticed that he wasn’t craving sex. The longer he thought on it, the more he realised that maybe he’d never really craved sex the way he thought he did. His therapist had nodded along when he tried to explain it to him.
He masturbated a few times in the shower,so he knew everything downstairs was in working order. Just out of curiosity, he took a night to himself to see if he still remembered how to pick up pretty broads out of a crowd. The future slang was a sort of language barrier, but not so much that he found himself incapable of escorting a woman back to her apartment for a tumble. A few more nights like that one at a variety of bars, concreted his notion that hookup culture wasn’t for him.Â
While he’d always left the women pleased and hadn’t heard a single complaint, it didn’t feel right. It was ungentlemanly. So, he fell into a routine of proper dating. Except the relationships hardly lasted. Being a part time Avenger meant that they would always come second, which was not something a broad liked to hear. Or it could be that he couldn’t let just anyone into his apartment. Women felt like he was hiding something. Or, and this seemed the most popular, they were tired of waiting for him to make the first move.Â
On one of his internet rabbit hole learning experiences, he stumbled across a term that he couldn’t stop thinking about. Even as he tried to reason himself out of it. Bucky liked girls, he always had. He liked kissing them and holding their hand and being around them. He’d had sex with women, and could easily admit that he was good at it.
 He wasn’t against anyone who was queer. He’d made more than his fair share of trips to pick Steve up from the police station for hanging around the wrong parts of New York. Hell, he’d kissed a boy when he was younger. Mostly to see what Steve was getting arrested for, but it hadn’t ever turned into anything more. He was heterosexual through and through.
It wasn’t easy to bring these kinds of thoughts up with Steve, especially now that he’d set his sights on a guy that worked in computer support, or whatever it was called. So, he’d gone to his therapist first. He’d been sympathetic and had spent a good portion of their session reassuring Bucky that liking women and not wanting to have sex with them all of the time could be mutually exclusive. He spent a great deal of the night reading through some articles his therapist had suggested and doing a more thorough search for personal accounts.Â
At first, it had been like doing research on a topic he needed to know about for a mission. If someone asked him a question, he needed to be ready with the answer. Then it was like when he was catching up on future stuff. Associating things he remembered with things that were new to him and finding the bridge that connected them. It was well into the morning hours when the reading became more about following the information in a way that validated what his own thoughts and feelings were. It was a long journey that ended in a dead sprint on one of the special treadmills designed to keep up with the supersoldiers living in the Tower.
Steve had found him around the same time as the sun did.
“Hey, pal, you good?”
Steve’s smile easily outmatched the sun creeping through the mess of skyscrapers.
“Yeah, I just-” Bucky hesitated, still a bit wary but determined, “I need to talk to you about something.”
Steve’s smile didn’t lose any of its brilliance, just took on a more serious tone, “You can talk to me about anything, you know that.”
“I know, I just don’t want you to think that I don’t… Don’t think less of me, or that I’m… I don’t know, but I’m still the same person I was before.”
Steve’s face dropped into a significantly more Captain America-esq one, and Bucky suppressed the small panic fluttering through his chest. It was Steve’s super serious one, not the battle one and for that Bucky was relieved.
“I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”
Bucky blew out a nervous breath and tried to focus on making the words come out right.
“I’ve been thinking, and I did a lot of research just to be sure and I talked it over with Dr. Michaels a bit, so I’m pretty sure about it. That’s not to say that I’m completely wrong and that this will change. I just want you to know that this is the conclusion that I’ve come to. It doesn’t mean anything about how I feel about you, I just need you to know that this is how I feel.”
“It’s okay, Buck. You can tell me anything.” Steve had shifted from concern to confusion to concern again and was tittering over the edge towards panic.
“I like women. You know that I like women and that I always have. I told you about that boy that one time and how I didn’t like him like I like women.”
Steve looked to nearly collapse with relief. This was far from the conversation that he thought they were about to have.
“Bucky, you know that if you like men now too, that’s okay with me. You know it is.”
“No, no, no,” Bucky shook his head, “it’s not that. I just… I don’t know how to say it.”
Steve rested a hand on Bucky’s arm and looked him dead in the eye, “Just say what you need to say and we can hash it out after. I promise that it’s going to take quite a bit before I give up on being your friend.”
“I don’t care about sex,” the words tumbled from his mouth in a rush, “I mean I do, sort of, but not how I thought that everyone else did. It’s fine, I don’t hate it. I just don’t really need it. Oh, this is coming out all wrong. I’m trying to say that pretty sure I’m asexual.”
Steve laughed. It was completely inappropriate and nothing was funny. Steve was just so relieved that it hadn’t been something more closely affiliated with their day jobs.
“It’s stupid, I know,” Bucky stepped away. “I’m probably just reading the signs all wrong.”
Steve stepped forward and stifled his laughter.
“Buck, I’m not laughing at you,” Steve said as he caught his best friend’s arm. “I swear I’m not, I just wasn’t… expecting this conversation.”
It hurt a little that Bucky knew which conversation Steve had been expecting. It was the one that Steve would never stop expecting anytime Bucky wanted to have a serious conversation. It hurt, but Bucky understood.
“It’s okay if you are asexual,” Steve said in assurance, one hand on his oldest friend’s shoulder. “Admittedly, I don’t completely understand the full meaning behind the word but that’s nothing new. The world is a much different place than a lotta people thought it was going to be and doing a bit of research never hurt anyone who wasn’t willing to learn.”
Bucky still felt like maybe he’d jumped the gun and was wrong about the whole thing. Like by telling Steve, he would suddenly have a realization that he had been wrong about everything.
“And if one day, fifty years from now, you come to the realization that maybe you weren’t asexual afterall, I’ll tell you the same thing I’m, telling you now: Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to me kick your ass seven ways to Sunday like I planned on doing when I walked in here?”
The knot in his chest loosened and Bucky choked out a laugh. That kernel of self doubt wasn’t gone, but being around Steve made it easy to forget it even existed.
*AN: I've absolutely zero experience in coming out, and still struggle with my sexuality. If things feel a bit off, please attribute this as inexperience not willful negligence. Thank you.*
Bucky was allergic to commitment. He was a serial dater and a chronic bachelor. Those were just a few of the phrases that the future had adopted.
His mother had called him doll dizzy even before he’d really understood what it meant. His father had been the same way, his grandfather reassured her fondly. He’d find a skirt that would pin him down eventually, Bucky’s father agreed, just like his mother did him. Bucky knew that his mother prayed that he wouldn’t get some poor girl in the family way at night when his father had gone to sleep and he was sneaking out.
At the time, it had just been something that boys did before settling down with a nice girl. Maybe it wasn’t something to grandstand, but he didn’t catch any flak for it either. And it wasn’t like he was an anchor clanker. No way would he ever be so callous as to jump from one girl to the next without a care as to who was dating who or who was whose sister. It was ungentleman-like and, while she might not approve, he was his momma's son.
It wasn’t uncommon for girls to accuse him of liking the chase more than the dame, but that never quite felt right. Sure, the chase was fun. Planning everything out, figuring out the best way to woo this one so that he’d score a date for Steve too; there was a sort of pride that came with success. But the chase wasn’t nearly as intoxicating as the intimacy of being with a pretty dame made up just for him.
And when he meant intimacy, he meant intimacy. The sex was good - and not just for him - but it always seemed to come second to just being with someone. So, when the pretty dames started talking about going the family way, it soured things. He was the oldest of his siblings and had experience in helping out with babies when his mother was exhausted, and he didn’t hate it. It just… didn’t feel like something he wanted to try to have.Â
Especially not if he was expected to participate the way his father did. Which was to say, just enough to keep them wanting his approval. It was probably the fact that he wanted approval from his father that he became a skirt chaser. Albeit a very careful one, for his mother’s sanity.
Then war came and he’d had the brotherly intimacy of having a whole gaggle of boys to look after and be the best sergeant he could be for them. Strangely enough, he didn’t miss sex. He never said it but he didn’t. Whenever talk would arise of girls waiting back home, he knew all of the right words to say but they felt empty.Â
A great deal of his letters came from his sister, Becca, and his mother. Steve wrote every now and again, but that wasn’t unexpected. While they hadn’t parted on bad terms, Bucky had definitely cursed the day his draft came in the mail. But the war was nearly over and they wouldn’t be apart for too long. He’d take out Adolf Hitler himself if he had to.Â
But none of Bucky’s perceived future was to be. There was the blip of bright light when he’d fought alongside Steve and the other Howling Commandos, when it seemed that they really would end the war with a handful of men. Then the dark cloud of the next seventy years would hold his memories in a tight grip, loosening only when it had come down to shooting the last person who knew him before he was a monster.
The years following nearly killing his best friend were hard and only marginally brighter than the shadows of his own memories. He was exhausted all the time, even as his body was rearing for a good knock-down-drag-out. It was a crippling combination that therapy helped him work through.Therapy held so much stigma that it took him a while to crack open, but when he did it was almost amazing how much better he felt. He still talked to Steve about the deep stuff, but it felt good to just spew all of the nasty, irrational stuff that he knew was irrational to someone that he didn’t share such a long history with.
When Bucky had gotten back up on the dating horse, it had been an accident. All he’d done was ask a girl out to lunch at a place down the street that neither had been to before and it had turned into a three week long misunderstanding that might’ve been comical if he hadn’t been so shocked when she’d jumped his bones. While it wasn’t the definition of hookup culture, it had been his introduction to it. He’d thought that they were just being friendly and she’d thought he was just waiting for her to make the first move.
It was awkward walking back home to Steve and his shared apartment, thoughts swirling around in his head. It wasn’t that he’d completely missed any potential cues she’d no doubt broadcasted to the whole world, it was how he’d never even considered it. The more he thought on it, the more he realized that since he’d became Bucky Barnes again and shed the Winter Soldier persona, sex hadn’t even occured to him.Â
When he talked to Steve the next day, Steve had said that he thought Bucky was taking things slow but if he was really worried about it, they could go see a doctor. Bucky didn’t think he was worried per say, just surprised and maybe a smidge relieved. He still felt like himself and hadn’t even noticed that he wasn’t craving sex. The longer he thought on it, the more he realised that maybe he’d never really craved sex the way he thought he did. His therapist had nodded along when he tried to explain it to him.
He masturbated a few times in the shower,so he knew everything downstairs was in working order. Just out of curiosity, he took a night to himself to see if he still remembered how to pick up pretty broads out of a crowd. The future slang was a sort of language barrier, but not so much that he found himself incapable of escorting a woman back to her apartment for a tumble. A few more nights like that one at a variety of bars, concreted his notion that hookup culture wasn’t for him.Â
While he’d always left the women pleased and hadn’t heard a single complaint, it didn’t feel right. It was ungentlemanly. So, he fell into a routine of proper dating. Except the relationships hardly lasted. Being a part time Avenger meant that they would always come second, which was not something a broad liked to hear. Or it could be that he couldn’t let just anyone into his apartment. Women felt like he was hiding something. Or, and this seemed the most popular, they were tired of waiting for him to make the first move.Â
On one of his internet rabbit hole learning experiences, he stumbled across a term that he couldn’t stop thinking about. Even as he tried to reason himself out of it. Bucky liked girls, he always had. He liked kissing them and holding their hand and being around them. He’d had sex with women, and could easily admit that he was good at it.
 He wasn’t against anyone who was queer. He’d made more than his fair share of trips to pick Steve up from the police station for hanging around the wrong parts of New York. Hell, he’d kissed a boy when he was younger. Mostly to see what Steve was getting arrested for, but it hadn’t ever turned into anything more. He was heterosexual through and through.
It wasn’t easy to bring these kinds of thoughts up with Steve, especially now that he’d set his sights on a guy that worked in computer support, or whatever it was called. So, he’d gone to his therapist first. He’d been sympathetic and had spent a good portion of their session reassuring Bucky that liking women and not wanting to have sex with them all of the time could be mutually exclusive. He spent a great deal of the night reading through some articles his therapist had suggested and doing a more thorough search for personal accounts.Â
At first, it had been like doing research on a topic he needed to know about for a mission. If someone asked him a question, he needed to be ready with the answer. Then it was like when he was catching up on future stuff. Associating things he remembered with things that were new to him and finding the bridge that connected them. It was well into the morning hours when the reading became more about following the information in a way that validated what his own thoughts and feelings were. It was a long journey that ended in a dead sprint on one of the special treadmills designed to keep up with the supersoldiers living in the Tower.
Steve had found him around the same time as the sun did.
“Hey, pal, you good?”
Steve’s smile easily outmatched the sun creeping through the mess of skyscrapers.
“Yeah, I just-” Bucky hesitated, still a bit wary but determined, “I need to talk to you about something.”
Steve’s smile didn’t lose any of its brilliance, just took on a more serious tone, “You can talk to me about anything, you know that.”
“I know, I just don’t want you to think that I don’t… Don’t think less of me, or that I’m… I don’t know, but I’m still the same person I was before.”
Steve’s face dropped into a significantly more Captain America-esq one, and Bucky suppressed the small panic fluttering through his chest. It was Steve’s super serious one, not the battle one and for that Bucky was relieved.
“I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”
Bucky blew out a nervous breath and tried to focus on making the words come out right.
“I’ve been thinking, and I did a lot of research just to be sure and I talked it over with Dr. Michaels a bit, so I’m pretty sure about it. That’s not to say that I’m completely wrong and that this will change. I just want you to know that this is the conclusion that I’ve come to. It doesn’t mean anything about how I feel about you, I just need you to know that this is how I feel.”
“It’s okay, Buck. You can tell me anything.” Steve had shifted from concern to confusion to concern again and was tittering over the edge towards panic.
“I like women. You know that I like women and that I always have. I told you about that boy that one time and how I didn’t like him like I like women.”
Steve looked to nearly collapse with relief. This was far from the conversation that he thought they were about to have.
“Bucky, you know that if you like men now too, that’s okay with me. You know it is.”
“No, no, no,” Bucky shook his head, “it’s not that. I just… I don’t know how to say it.”
Steve rested a hand on Bucky’s arm and looked him dead in the eye, “Just say what you need to say and we can hash it out after. I promise that it’s going to take quite a bit before I give up on being your friend.”
“I don’t care about sex,” the words tumbled from his mouth in a rush, “I mean I do, sort of, but not how I thought that everyone else did. It’s fine, I don’t hate it. I just don’t really need it. Oh, this is coming out all wrong. I’m trying to say that pretty sure I’m asexual.”
Steve laughed. It was completely inappropriate and nothing was funny. Steve was just so relieved that it hadn’t been something more closely affiliated with their day jobs.
“It’s stupid, I know,” Bucky stepped away. “I’m probably just reading the signs all wrong.”
Steve stepped forward and stifled his laughter.
“Buck, I’m not laughing at you,” Steve said as he caught his best friend’s arm. “I swear I’m not, I just wasn’t… expecting this conversation.”
It hurt a little that Bucky knew which conversation Steve had been expecting. It was the one that Steve would never stop expecting anytime Bucky wanted to have a serious conversation. It hurt, but Bucky understood.
“It’s okay if you are asexual,” Steve said in assurance, one hand on his oldest friend’s shoulder. “Admittedly, I don’t completely understand the full meaning behind the word but that’s nothing new. The world is a much different place than a lotta people thought it was going to be and doing a bit of research never hurt anyone who wasn’t willing to learn.”
Bucky still felt like maybe he’d jumped the gun and was wrong about the whole thing. Like by telling Steve, he would suddenly have a realization that he had been wrong about everything.
“And if one day, fifty years from now, you come to the realization that maybe you weren’t asexual afterall, I’ll tell you the same thing I’m, telling you now: Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to me kick your ass seven ways to Sunday like I planned on doing when I walked in here?”
The knot in his chest loosened and Bucky choked out a laugh. That kernel of self doubt wasn’t gone, but being around Steve made it easy to forget it even existed.
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I have found love in the margins of your letters to me. I have found life in the spaces between words. In the loops of your handwriting, I have found passion. Your punctuation has given peace.
The things you say between the sentences you write have shown me the world in the words. For that I curse you.
“I, Perseus Jackson, Son of Sally Jackson and the God of the Seas, do so petition Olympus for the soul of Annabeth Chase, daughter of Frederick Chase and the Goddess of Strategy.”
“You petition the Gods for the life of a mortal? The gods have no mercy for fallen heroes. Even as Poseidon’s son, they would not grant you such a wish.”
Percy ignored her, eyes fixed on Annabeth’s blank stare. If he could’ve willed her back to life, he would’ve done it. If he thought that Hades might take him instead, he would’ve offered. If begging for her to just come back to him might've coaxed her into staying, he would’ve asked. Instead, he did what he knew would work.
“I would offer you the death of Gaia in payment for the life of Annabeth Chase.”
“You would dare to assume you could defeat me? You are but one demigod. Your friends are scattered, there is no one to help you.”
Percy’s gaze lifted away from Annabeth to stare down the Earth Mother.
“I am a son of the Big Three. I do not need help.”
“Is that a challenge I hear? I am still more than willing to let you go free. You have raised me from my slumber and I would still reward you for it.”
Carefully, he laid Annabeth on the ground and stood. The Earth Mother’s smile wavered as he pulled Riptide from his pocket. His eyes were dark and threatening. This was not the demigod who had laughed and made jokes. Here was the demigod who had lived despite all attempts to kill him. Here was the demigod who had chosen Tartarus, who had faced down every monster he had ever sent there and lived. Here was Poseidon’s Son.
Here was Perseus Jackson.
A choking gasp startled his gaze from Gaia and he turned to see Annabeth rolling onto her side, her skin a warm pink and her chest heaving with life. A woman was kneeling beside her, gently rubbing her back and murmuring soothing words. The goddess’s steely gaze looked up to meet his stare and Percy felt a knot loosen in his chest.
“Take her as far from here as you can.”
Athena nodded and looked back to her daughter, “Say goodbye, you’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Annabeth looked up at her mother in confusion. Only moments before it had been Percy staring down at her, promising her it would be okay, it would all be okay.
“M-mom?”
“Hey, Wise Girl?”
Annabeth’s head weakly turned to look at him, “Percy?”
“You saved me.”
“Percy, what are you talking about?” the raspy words only barely reached his ears as her head spun to figure out what was happening. “What happened?”
“I’m saying, I love you. I’ll always love you and I’ll always fight for you, but you saved me and now it’s my turn. Goodbye Wise Girl.”
Annabeth’s eyes widened in understanding but before she could say any more or fight her way from her mother’s arms, they were gone. In their place a too-large, too-bright stain remained. A reminder of his promise.
“So what if your girlfriend’s still alive? That doesn’t mean it wasn’t all a trick. It could be an illusion. They could be showing you what they want you to see so you’ll do their dirty work.”
His resolve solidified and racing heart began to slow as he felt himself falling backwards into the part of him that raged with the power of a hundred hurricanes and had no mercy to call upon.
“I am Percy Jackson, and you will die by my hand.”
“You,” she spat back, “will die by your own hand.”
He only raised Riptide, admiring the way the shining sun glinted off its clean edge.
“Do you know what happens to an oceanside cliff? Tell me, Gaia, when has the earth ever waged war on the water? When have you ever won against a tide of a thousand years?”
“You do not have a thousand years, Jackson, and you do not have the tide either.” She gestured to the barren landscape around them.
Perseus Jackson looked Gaia right in the eyes and replied in a voice that echoed the calm before the storm.
“I am the tide and I will not need a thousand years to beat you.”
He smiled darkly. And I don’t like it when people try to stop me from taking what’s mine,
The pale, stone cold boy’s eyes filled with fury. His robes swirled around him, the inky blackness unable to cover his icy stare. A scythe was now splattered with crimson.
He was the Reaper. A prince of darkness, bringer of death.
Nothing would ever stand in his way.
He surveyed the crumbling kingdom of the Underworld, ignoring the screams of the king behind him.
It was now his. All his.
Except for one. No matter how much he tried to deny it, he couldn’t touch her.
A fiery soul that burned and made him hurt so badly. For she somehow managed to pierce the layers of darkness he’d shrouded his heart in long ago. He’d forgotten what it was like to feel.
And although it hurt, it made him love her even more.
Fire and darkness. At first he only watched from afar, tentative, curious. But it was when she looked at him that everything fell apart.
The ethereal, beautiful woman who vacantly sat among a crumbling library. Her hair was spun fire, her eyes piercing and all-knowing. He hated her gaze. The way she was able to see the cracks in the wall he created, the barrier that had become a part of him.
Though he clearly didn’t hate her as much as he thought because the next day he ordered the library to be rebuilt. Now it gleamed with black marble floors and towering bookcases. Afterwords he strode over to where the woman sat. She lay sprawled in an armchair, engrossed in a book.
You should be kissing my feet. That’s real wood. Do you know how rare it is down here?
She merely raised her eyebrow. If it’s so scarce then why did you use it on this?
He flushed angrily, his fingers curling into a fist. Draco could feel his scythe materializing in his hand. He quickly snapped his fingers and the obsidian disappeared.
Because I want you to be mine,
So you think building a girl a library will make her yours? I’m not an object,
She stared at him in disbelief. Do you even know my name?
He wrapped his arms around his torso, mumbling curses under his breath. They sat there for a few minutes before he sighed.
My name is Draco, he said begrudgingly. She smiled wryly.
You’re like a puppy, you kn-
I am not!
Hermione, she said laughing. Nice to meet you,
Hermione extended her hand. He paused, meeting her eyes. Those familiar, warm brown irises.
Yet they held no sense of recognition. He felt a sharp pang as he accepted.
But that was alright.
For seven centuries ago he’d made a promise. That he would never leave her and would always be by her side.
Now he had finally found her again. And he had no intention of letting her go.
So here’s some info on Ancient Greek wedding traditions which (oh my stars and garters!!) included abducting the bride. With the father’s permission, which Hades got before he took her away.
Here’s a whole book on the subject of Ancient Greek wedding custom and its conflation with funeral rites. (Which sounds a bit like Hades and Persephone to anyone who’s ever dabbled in things like explication and context)
Here’s a link to another book that talks about Persephone’s rise to power as a result of her willingly eating the pomegranate seeds.
Oh shit!!
Here’s a whole bunch of myths and hymns that talk about her Queen of the Underworld badassery!!
Holy pug tacos Batman!!
Here’s another book about the myth focusing on the seasonal religious and liminal rites. WHICH TAKE PLACE IN THE DRY SUMMER (not the fucking winter), which you know if you read a book.Way to go, OP!
All these fucking books! Â What could anyone possibly do with them all?!?!?!?! Do you eat books to absorb their powers instead of read them?
A better guess would be that you got into a moral panic over the name of a certain Renaissance statue and maybe after reading three pages of Edith Hamilton or the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article. And then used that to castigate and demean not only the people who actually take their limited time to create gorgeous art but also to denigrate modern day worshippers of Persephone and Hades?
Maybe next time, you stringy piece of over-boiled okra, you might want to take your own advice and pick up a book, instead of reducing the feared and respected Queen of the Underworld who held power equal to or in many interpretations GREATER than her husband into a meaningless pastiche of female disenfranchisement that you seemingly plucked from your own ass.
man the ancient greeks didn’t dare to speak persephone’s name she was that powerful and venerated (they called her Kore, “the maiden”), hades didn’t get that honour
Reblogging for the links until this misapprehension finally ceases.
See also:Â Seduction and Rape in Greek Myth and Predatory Goddesses, both by classicist Mary Lefkowicz.
EDIT: Finally put together a bibliography of scholarly works about Hades and Persephone with the help of @coloricioso to help refute these old, tired accusations: https://honorthegods.tumblr.com/post/174794576611/honorthegods-hades-and-persephone-side
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