Bonus Content - Hekate POV

Hey all!

This month, you voted for some aftermath from Hekate's perspective. So here she is, on a break from her very extensive work, and musing on the subject of Persephone. 

I hope you enjoy it. Cheers!

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Hekate quite literally cannot remember the last time she was this exhausted.

After she and Persephone had both collapsed, she’d been the first to wake. It hadn’t been such a long time she was unconscious; certain complex magical contingencies she had in place had drawn energy from the places they were meant to, and the enchantments she had etched on her very own body had done their works as they needed to, returning her to consciousness after only a few minutes, alive but exceedingly-fatigued.

Her own fault, really, in some sense. The Underworld had been so safe for so long that she had invested much of herself into it, and had much less to draw on than she needed. She’d pulled some from the infrastructure as she went, because it was necessary, but now that the danger had passed that was going to be more of a problem than a solution. Entire sections of the city would be missing light, water, the basic foundational aspects of life. It might be true that spirits didn’t strictly need those things, but they should have them.

No one should have to exist on the bare minimum.

Getting the both of them somewhere better for their purposes had been a matter of asking Hades for an assist, which he provided, the dear man, even in spite of what must have been considerable fatigue of his own. She wasn’t the only one with most of her resources invested in keeping the realm functioning as it ought to be.

But from there, it hadn’t stopped. Megaira and Tisiphone were in terrible shape, and when Alekto had shown up with them and an unconscious Pyri in tow, she’d had to drop anything and everything else she was doing to save their lives. Tisiphone didn’t take too long to stabilize, but Megaira’s heart had nearly ruptured, to say nothing of the damage that was done to the rest of her. Apparently one of Echidna’s foul Daughters had gotten to her, and so in some sense, it was quite fortunate she was even still alive to help.

Then there were the injuries of her other friends. Persephone and Pyri had taken the worst of it, but Hermes was completely exhausted of his magic. Charon was that special kind of reticent and surly that could only mean they’d accidentally transformed, at least partway, and their constant resistance to that possibly wreaked a unique kind of havoc on their system that required delicacy and care when handling. Alekto herself had remained in the waiting room for several hours, slowly oozing blood from several wounds but insisting she go last of everyone.

The limited healers that worked under her, Hekate assigned to handle injured spirits, such as those from the market square. But some of those cases were beyond their abilities, and so they became hers as well.

Now, at last, a week and a half later, she had the time to pause to eat, and sit down. She was, at this point, entirely sustaining herself on the magical bonds she had with her family; their magic was as a rule not suited to healing, but she had learned long ago how to convert it with minimal loss. So in some sense everyone was helping, but in this the lion’s share of the work, the physical work of moving about and casting and writing records and seeing to everyone, was hers. So was the mental work, of diagnosing maladies and devising solutions and trying to keep her emotions in check while all of the people she loved most in the world were injured, or dying, or—in Persephone’s case—somehow neither and both at the same time.

So, naturally, she took her limited meal in Persephone’s room.

There wasn’t much to do, here, except eat and extend her magical senses towards the young goddess. The latter was something she found herself doing quite often and from greater distances. Monitoring her vitals, checking to make sure nothing had changed or destabilized. The light connection was something that had kept her level through some of the most arduous days of work, an evenhandedness she doubts she would have had if she hadn’t been able to check, whenever she needed to, that Persephone was all right.

And still, there’s something irreplicably soothing about actually seeing her breathe.

The thought brings a soft chuckle bubbling to the surface of her, and Hekate shoots the other woman a wry look. “You know… I doubt it will be much longer now before I’ve fallen for you entirely. Woe is you, I daresay.”

She expected this result, of course. Has been very much looking forward to it, in a way. But the process is worth savoring, and she’s in no great hurry to get there. Hurry is something she finds is mostly the provenance of younger deities than she, like Hermes or Pyri or at times even Alekto, who all very much feel the urgency of everything they see or do or experience.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but the time in which Hekate might have hurried to anything is long past. She learned patience because she had to. Because she has always been able to see at least little glimmers of the future, and learned quickly that there was no accelerating the results you wanted, nor staving off the ones you didn’t. The gods were slaves to Fate, and it was only mortals who were free.

“It’s not so bad, really, though,” she muses, chewing over the sweet flesh of a fig. “She seldom bothers to dictate all that much to us, and occasionally there’s something downright delightful in there.”

The Moirae are not especially fond of their collective vision of Fate’s weave. Perhaps Hekate wouldn’t like it, either, if her vision were so complete, but it isn’t, and she can still find the wonder and hope in what there is.

Persephone’s vital signs do not change, and so as she slices some cheese off her small block of it and lays it over a slice of bread, Hekate gently probes the fresh connection between their magics. It has a different feel, really, from those she maintains with the rest of her family, but that is mostly due to the traumatic circumstances in which it was formed. Perhaps… perhaps Fate has had Her say in this as well, though. It wouldn’t be surprising.

She wonders, distantly, if Persephone will want to keep it. Most likely not, in the sense that she didn’t consent to it in the first place, and unlike Hekate she does not maintain almost half a dozen bonds at any one time. Even if this one is irrevocably special, it’s hard to know if that nuance will be something she can get across or something that will get entirely lost in the explanation. She doesn’t want to make her feel pressured to keep it, after all.

Even if she very much does want her to keep it.

What would it feel like, to be this close to you, always?

The question is a delightful sort of torment, and Hekate lets herself feel just a little lost in it for a while, humming softly as she finishes her meal. Once all the little remnants are packed away and gathered, she stands, sighing quietly as she throws a last glance at Persephone.

“Do wake up soon, won’t you, my dear? We have so much to discuss, and everyone misses you. Me most of all.”

There is, for now, no response, but Hekate hadn’t been expecting one. It is with a strange ambivalence, then, that she takes her leave.