promp: Persephone went of her own free will

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I wrote this yesterday for a prompt I found in mythology_kink (which I likewise just joined yesterday) so I'm posting it here today. The prompt was that Persephone went of her own free will, as well as a request from light D/s (Hades dominant) without going NC-17. I think it hovers around PG-13? Anyway, I think I hit the mark.

Just to say: I have a LOT of Hades/Persephone feels. It should say a lot about me that this story was in the first book I read on my own, Tanglewood Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (I was five and an overachiever) and this particular story was the first one I finished. See, my mom was taking too long to read it to me so I finished it myself and told her the next night at bedtime that she needed to find a new book, because I'd finished that one. Suffice to say, I fell in love with mythology very young. Hades/Persephone remains my favorite, with Eros/Psyche a very very close second.

I RP both pairs. Hades in one, Psyche in the other, and while this technically wasn't written about our RP characters, I'm still tagging it that way, because it fits. Anyway, enough talking; here's the bloody thing.

It's not a kidnapping when the abducted party is willing to go. The story got twisted through the ages, because Demeter's pride wouldn't let her admit that her daughter chose to live, to love, and to marry the King of the Dead. Persephone chose to live in the Underworld for half the year, rather than stay with Demeter in eternal green, with ripe lush fields and everything she could have wanted.

Except that wasn't what Persephone wanted at all. Demeter thought she raised a sweet and pleasant girl, placid, moldable, and mild. Instead she got a curious and devious woman who, no matter what those legends say, chose to run away and marry the god of the Underworld, to escape her life of monotony.

Persephone wanted everything that the life Demeter planned for her would not give. She wanted passion, and she wanted danger. She could get both in Hades. For the cold dark king of death is not as cold as he seems. In their bedroom, his blood runs hot, and when his large hands pin Persephone's wrists down onto luxurious pillows, hers does too.

She wants it. She wants it like she wanted to leave her mother, to escape her insipid rules, her controlling ways, and her inability to see Persephone as anything but another version of herself. Persephone only saw the dark and solemn god Hades only once before she concocted her plan, but once was enough. She had heard plenty about him already, and he was perfect. He was her solution. He was everything she wanted, and she had to make sure she was everything he wanted.

She planted figurative seeds while her mother planted literal ones. She made certain Zeus knew she was old enough to marry. She made certain he knew that he himself could not touch her without rousing her mother's ire. She made certain to cause just enough trouble for him that he needed to pass her off somewhere, to someone who could keep her far away. And she made certain he knew of her ability to give life even where no one ever expected anything to grow, like in the land of the dead. She waited for Zeus to decide to give her to his brother.

Then she took action. She strayed from the other priestesses. She made sure to be alone, to seem vulnerable, available. She was ready and waiting for the King of the Dead when he came for her, and if she fought it was only to get closer to him so he could take her away.

She knew that one who ate the food of the Underworld was condemned to stay there, so she hunted for food, but She was nearly foiled. The dead who still wished to be alive hid it all from her, thinking themselves her saviors, thinking they were helping her stay connected to the world above. When she finally found something to eat, it was but a pomegranate and still she hurried to devour what she could before it was too late, before he mother found a way to drag her back.

She managed only six seeds, but those meager seeds changed everything. So now for half the year, she drags herself above ground, brings the springtime, the green, the life to the world above. And for half the year she returns below, to her kingdom, her husband, her lover. He reads people, knows who goes to Elysium and who to Tartarus just by looking at them and weighing their soul. Just as easily he read how her desire for him flared when he restrained her, when his tone was commanding, when she submitted to him. She quickened more than just seeds and earth.

When he took her wrists in his strong hands, and held her arms up above her head, her eyes dilated, her lips and legs parted, and they both lost themselves to each other. She became his lover first, then his wife and queen, and beneath the surface of the world, she still rules beside him.

And all along, it was all her idea, what she always wanted.

Annnd now I want to write some Eros/Psyche. There was an already filled prompt there for lovins in the dark, which I might just write for myself >.>