anger and armor, all the way down
megara deina | 32 | spy
PAST: (slight mention of sex work)
You came from somewhere. You must have. Children did not just materialize from nothing, certainly not in this den of sin and decadence.
But you did.
Just as Hades solidified his coup and expanded his power, you appeared. The old guard was gone or co-opted, their children slipping neatly into the new regime. Elysium was not yet what it would be, lingering on the precipice of grandeur but still observed enough that a child couldn’t just appear without being traced.
And so, the fates would say, your mother was Tartarus herself. And your father, some clueless sycophant who didn’t quite realize which master he was actually serving, well - he never knew. Just as the very human woman who must have birthed you vanished, so did all record of them. Yet, there must have been something, or someone that kept you alive, a cruel twist of fate would say it was a joke. Later you would say it was spite.
Because that was the thing about Tartarus, no one ever quite took the region or its progeny seriously. Maybe it was the hedonism and excess of it all - casinos and nightclubs and brothels, oh my. Even now, you can’t quite understand the patronizing, and almost disdainful way people speak about your home. As if they didn't all sell themselves off every day for someone else’s benefit in one way or another. What really was the difference between a soldier and a prostitute, other than perception? When soldiers die it’s a goddamn tragedy, the joke went, with prostitutes, well, she had it coming.
You learned the value of information quickly, in a place like this secrets were more valuable than currency. Because everyone who came here had money, and money to burn. They didn’t care how much they lost, it was the thrill they were chasing. You chased that thrill too, but for a girl who came from nothing and nowhere - it was far easier to gamble with what you had. Other people’s secrets, picked up by lingering in doorways and blending into shadows, you filed them all away within your far too inquisitive and expansive mind. Once you figured out the value, it was second nature to collect information, and you learned to blur the lines between confidant and eavesdropper.
They say you have no weaknesses - no vices or vulnerabilities. And you don’t, not in the conventional sense. You maintain a hard limit with drugs and drinking, not touching the former and relying on your own self awareness plus the instructions you give bartenders for the latter. You aren’t vain or superficial enough to be swayed by expensive things and gilded promises. And you have no family which could be manipulated. In short, you are the perfect spy.
Or so the legend goes.
The truth? Most of the rumors about you are real - your notorious temper, your steadfast devotion to Asphodel and her children, the swift vengeance dealt upon any threats. The part they get wrong about you, about Megara - the child who came from nowhere and nothing - is the very thing you lock closest to your heart: you are utterly terrified of losing anymore of your family.
Orpheus can burn, you scoff, while in the same breath you cradle Eurydice and feel the ache of every single tear they shed, and many more that they don’t. With anyone else ‘I told you so’ would be hot on your tongue. But there isn’t anyone else, you finally admit. Asphodel's children are vanishing, more and more those you’ve loved and protected all your life are drifting further and further away.
But here’s the thing, the grounding, most fundamental belief - Tartarus was the one single place where you could be accepted and adored for exactly who you were. You knew the others would fight against this - Olympe and their visions of grandeur; those shrinking to fill a space on Pontius. Everywhere that was not here was utterly seductive by that fact alone - it wasn’t what was known. But you knew the risk, and more importantly - you knew the rules. Olympe, Pontius, and Arcadia - they’d gather your secrets and insights with open, welcoming arms only to shame and manipulate them later behind your back, all cloaked in a golden disguise. Down here, in the dark and depths - you knew exactly what you were getting into - the deal was the deal.
Or so you thought.
Orpheus was the loss you could hear - all those times you pretended to ignore the poetry in their lyrics only to have a bastardization of their love songs haunt Eurydice. In their own turn, Eurydice was the touch whose loss you’d started mourning ages ago. Right when Orpheus left. You felt them leaving the very moment they clasped your hand and bound themself as a Fury. Even now, their mind drifts far away with their head in your lap, your fingers twisted in their hair. A fraction here and mostly gone - you learn to miss their comfort.
Even though you’d never indulge in their creations, you always taste laughter at the thought of Hypnos. Utterly hopeless when trying to imitate you or Thanatos, their carefree exterior hid a kindred devotion to perfecting Somnus, which found its way onto every tongue. It's bittersweet, but you don’t know how to hold on to a shadow. Thanatos, in turn, you’ve seen less and less and less. Perhaps it was better this way - to only see them when they found their way back home. You see how far their reach expands as you collect the whispers of their impact. You can only guess at how long they can linger right on the edge of here and gone.
You hate the way Zagreus smells like home. They’ve been looking for a way out for almost as long as you can remember. Relishing in the freedom that Asphodel gave its children whilst banking on their father’s reputation, Zag was perhaps one of the worst mistakes you’ve made. A goddamn cliche, actually, and you were so fucking stupid to think you alone could keep them here.
But that was what being the eldest was, right? Doing everything yourself? How much longer could you hold onto the delicate balance required to keep those you loved within reach and do your job? Zeus, it seems, is willing to wager. You lose sleep obsessing over how many of your beloveds you might lose to the mirage of something beyond the darkness that raised you.
FUTURE:
I SPY - One thing about Tartarus that Megara can rely on is that it is never boring. No one comes to the underworld with utterly pure intentions, and even if they do - somewhere between sin and decadence, they tend to lose all sight of it. Megara knows this, intimately. She gathers whispers with smiles on her rounds of the casino floors, by lending a sympathetic ear to the dancers’ complaints, and playing starry-eyed bartender next to Eurydice. Of course everyone who works for Hades and Nyx knows to report any information, no matter how mundane, to Megara. But there is something to be said for the thrill of gathering it herself - maybe that’s just another way to cling onto the control she’s losing daily. Megara knows practically everything that happens in Tartarus and she has crafted these networks to provide the most accurate information, with several fail-safes. But the threats are bigger now, external forces attempting to influence (and steal) parts of Tartarus might require external assets and those with external influence…
SURFACE PRESSURE - They never quite had a childhood, not in the traditional sense. So it would be foolish of her to hang on to childish notions, to cling to promises made in the darkness and idealism of youth. But she did with all of her considerable strength. But the tighter one holds on to something, it seems, the more likely it is to shatter. What does it look like when the one thing that’s held someone together for years suddenly vanishes? Or when one’s been ignoring and suppressing the warning signs, the cracks in the foundation? Megara with all her years of whisper gathering and information seeking can control her emotions and school her expressions better than most. But what happens when it becomes too much, when she reaches the inevitable breaking point? And whose loss will be that last straw? And what if by obsessively clinging to Alecto and Tisiphone, she only succeeds in driving them away?
ALL THE KING’S MEN - It started with Ariadne, the little spider not knowing they were caught in an even bigger web until it was too late. Megara scoffed at the thought of just how quick they were to betray others to save their own skin. Scoffed, so she would not doubt. They shouldn’t have let them flee, certainly not to where they could become even more of a threat. If Ariadne was so quick to give them up, why would they care what threats were made against thier partners to keep them in line? Then there was Sisyphus - she couldn’t decide if her anger over this betrayal was sharper because he essentially got away with it, or if her rage flared at the callous way he dragged Zagreus down with him. Rationally, perhaps, Megara might be able to understand the value in having disgraced traitors in another court collect information. But she also knows the dangers inherent in desperate men with nothing left to lose. There is a part of her, a teeny tiny voice Megara can suppress most days, that questions Hades. After thirty years building an empire and safeguarding what made Tartarus real, what made it everything the others could only pretend to be, might their king be losing a step? She doesn’t want to accept this, doesn’t even want to consider the possibility because it threatens not only her position but shakes the entire foundation of her beliefs. Maybe it's Zagreus, or the others drifting farther and farther away. She doesn’t want to think that where her instinct is to cling tighter and react harsher, Hades might let go, forgive those who actively sought the destruction of the one thing they all hold sacred.
