#fun fact: i made three diff drawings of this idea with this being the third

[midnighteclipze]

POV: You're replaying Sucker for Love: Date to Die for and you get to Billie's chapter. The game's been buggy ever since, the characters are off, especially Billie. When you've gathered the ingredients in the kitchen and go to leave, the door slides open on its own, emerging from the darkness is the woman who's intent on killing you.

[druid-for-hire]

new Hadestown au, ICARUS!ORPHEUS, wherein orpheus is not the world’s greatest musician but rather the world’s greatest inventor/mechanic/tinkerer. his creations are wondrous and beautiful and a miracle. Orpheus his mission is to create something that will repair the world--take what’s broken, make it whole.

Orpheus is still very much an artist--only his art in this AU is visual instead of auditory. and he’s still poor! not everything he makes is immediately useful for survival and y’know, hardly anyone has the money to buy things, and he has a propensity to just. give things away, especially the smaller trinkets he makes. and they take a Long Time to make. so he still works at hermes’ bar

SO!!!

this orpheus is body pain solidarity KDSKFJH

he has a fucked up back from all the heavy lifting he does around the workshop, being hunched over while he works on stuff, and being stuck in weird positions for extended periods of time when he’s working on machines and whatever, especially the bigger ones

also he’s got a wrist brace

he has a set of gear he wears a lot especially when he’s in his workshop

1) his wing pack! he built it himself and he’s proud. the pack was also made to help with his back problems. he doesn’t wear his mechanic gear when he’s working at the bar, but sometimes he’ll leave the wings on because back hurty. also, following w icarus, the wings are kept smooth & together and waterproofed w wax, kinda like a gloss. he reapplies every so often

2) his goggles! every part about the design is impractical (the red lenses and the beak) but i like them. they protect his eyes from flying bits and sparks and sawdust etc. when he’s working and wind when he’s flying

3) his boots! they’re sturdy workin’ boots, and have a talon function to clasp onto and lift things up. especially useful for moving bigger things around the workshop, up to higher levels and what have you, and he gets to flit around the whole space with minimal usage of ladders. (yes, they’re inspired by Vulture’s boots from Spider-Man: Homecoming)

(ALSO. the model of his wings are white crow wings, bc of the myth of Coronis)

because in greek mythology, crows started out white and had beautiful voices and the reason they turned black and got croaky calls is because a crow had to tell Apollo that his lover, Coronis, left him to marry a mortal 

and Apollo got so upset he burned the crow and then burned Coronis to death, or burned the crow and then turned Coronis into a crow, depending on the version

(thanks to @princessponies81 for helping me figure this bit out)

so there are some... parallels here

also, IIRC crow wings are elliptical-type wings, meaning they’re good for a lot of control and maneuverability in tight spaces. good for the workshop

also he makes automata too! he has this little mockingbird to help him around the workshop. lots of calls for lots of signals, like how a car will have diff beep signals for low gas or parking brake on or door left open or key left in etc... little bird can measure and alert for lots of things

he’s also less noodle-y than canon orpheus because of how much he uses his arms and legs doing lifting, work, and flying

he’s not like. Built or anything. but hes got some strength to him

he doesn’t just make really good machines either; he’s absolutely as skilled in fine, delicate things as much as the big pieces—he sees the details himself, has to make it himself, he’s as skilled in silversmithy or goldsmithy as he is in mechanics, and i imagine he has skills in metallurgy too. maybe even a bit of glassblowing? just for piece assembly. all his pieces will fit most perfectly if he makes them himself

things like the Silver Swan automaton (i’d link a video but external links are illegal on tumblr)

also... i don’t know if they manage to get married this time, but they at least get the wedding bands

lover, tell me, if you can--who’s gonna make the wedding bands?

@supercantaloupe: the river gonna give us the wedding bands -- he draws the mineral, the stones from the silt, and crafts them himself

SO, he charms eurydice with one (or many) of his dazzling creations that also have usages in practicality and survival

as is the youzhe, she leaves when he gets to obsessive with working on something, holed up in his workshop instead of like. Surviving the winter

they last longer into the winter this time though because again, he does have a couple of machines good for tiding over the winter and surviving, and eurydice can operate them. but he’s too caught up with creating something to fix the world to repair them when they break down

when he leaves, he leaves his mockingbird to take care of his workshop while he’s gone. make sure there’s not leaks or fires, etc., keep everything in working order

the trip to hadestown still takes a long time, but less time than in canon, given that orpheus gets there on a pair of wings, though he gets grounded plenty of times due to bad weather. plus, his wings aren’t really meant for long-distance

so in the end the time still matches up; the events underground still happen on the onset of proper spring

he sails over the wall of the Styx on his wings, but it’s a feat easier said than done; it really is high and wide, just... hundreds of feet tall, and i headcanon that the “wall” is in fact seven layers of fortification because some myths say the River Styx wraps around the underworld seven times

and he is not a high altitude flier

uhhhhhhhhh blah blah something something ... i’m not clear on all the details but here are a few things:

orpheus gets the shit kicked out of him in Papers as usual and the fates hold his wings over him instead of his guitar

i have no idea how If It’s True goes

SOMEWHERE there’s Hey Little Songbird II (thank you to @supercantaloupe​ for authoring this idea);

it's Hades to Orpheus this time. Ironic, as he sings and flies, a real songbird.

and orpheus, that inspired inventor, that mechanic, that engineer, blessed by Hephaestus himself, being tempted to stay. It's a marvel of engineering, those factories. But they're rough around the edges, dirty, inefficient, unrefined. Imagine all the work he could do. Imagine how grand it would be, with just his help. And imagine how much fun it would be to fix it all!

but since he's fallen in love - and lost her once already - he has to pause and think. it's too good to be true, isn't it? Is it true? Can he really stay here forever, with parts and tools and endless projects worthy of his skill and attention - at least, without her?

ok back to me writing stuffs

there is no Epic I / Epic II / Epic III; the titles are now Trial I / Trial II / Trial III, like trial runs of prototypes, and on the third one it has a double meaning as a trial of judgement

Trial III goes as such:

(and thank you to @ferretteeth for this)

Hades orders him to build.  An impressive invention in turn for his life – a chance he gives only because his wife is smitten with interest. 

Orpheus gets three days and no more, and when he is finally ordered to come before the throne of basalt and steel he brings his invention. And Hades gives a curt, mocking laugh, because all Orpheus has in his hands is a simple box of bronze, cheap and adorably human. 

 He almost orders for Orpheus' death the moment he sees it, but then the boy lifts the lid and reveals a mechanical flower. Petals made out of metal rusted rosy, nectar of flecks of fool's gold. 

Delicate and beautiful; extremely finely spun, as if the metal were only woven fibers. It is as soft as any silk.

"Where did you get that," the king snaps in a hurry. "How did you know–" 

And then, with the twist of a key, the invention reveals to be a music box and long lost chords fill the Underworld.

(i originally had the idea that he builds a planetarium that replicates the summer above, a caught snippet of the thing that hades could never make on a large scale. a beautiful thing with flowers that blossomed and played the old song as hades brushed his hands across them, sun above. but i figured it’s probably more in line with the sensibilities of Hadestown if orpheus had created something less... grand)

so eurydice and orpheus are granted their chance to leave.

i’m not sure what the test is, because he’s got to fly out with eurydice clutched in his talons, and i want him to be as much a victim of his doubt as in canon

but he has to follow this flight path with absolute perfection, down to the flap. you fly too high, the flames of hadestown will catch him. he flies too low, the flames of hadestown will catch her.

i think, in his paranoia, he flies too high, and his wings catch fire

his wings are on fire--his arms are strapped in to them. he’s burning up. he’s burning.

he’s slowing down in his ascent. in a moment, he knows that if they’re going to make it, it’ll only be one of them, and... he’s not going to drop eurydice. he can’t do that to her.

when his wings can no longer climb, he throws her the final distance to the surface. she turns around and reaches desperately for him, but he’s too far away.

he falls. a comet.

he breaks.

the fact is, he dies

but he dies in hadestown. so now he’s just... well, one, no chance of going back aboveground. two, now he’s... sitting at the bottom of that long climb, broken and in pain, surrounded by the charred skeleton of his wings, broken and burned feathers, drips of melted oil and wax, and blood

he’s... there for a long time, just suffering, before someone comes to see if they made it out, and finds him at the bottom

hades sees this as an opportunity to bring him back, let him heal, and put him onto projects, perhaps “to get your mind off of it all,” but. orpheus doesn’t want to work. he doesn’t want to do anything

thanks to supercanteloupe again for co-authoring this section:

Hades says he'll squander his god given talents to just sit around all day but Orpheus won't listen

hades has just zero fucking clue how to deal with a depressed human

"have I not given him all he could want, metal, tools, a workbench? Bed, bread, fire? Strength in his bones? And yet he refuses still? The boy must be mad," he cries, angry

@s-aint-elmo: "i got a new mechanist" 

“you ruined a perfectly good talented young man is what you did. look at him, he's got depression"

persephone herself is a mess (less so after Trial III) but she has at least some sense—she is more in touch with mortals than him, spending time with them up on the surface and throwing revels, but also greeting those who lost their lovers/sisters/brothers/mothers/fathers in the winter before

persephone encouraging orpheus to build, not for her sake or for Hades', but for his own. little flowers, little birds, wind up toys and music boxes. something to keep him going

s-aint-elmo: she brings him pressed flowers from the surface, little trinkets, tokens of the green. orpheus only lets the first few wilt and rot at the corner of his table.

flowers bloom until they rot and fall apart

it's a sad, painful reminder

he eventually has the resolve to rebuild his wing pack—better this time, because really, he feels crippled without them after living w em for so long

edit: (and the feathers are black, a la the crow myth)

when hades first sees him like, passing by w wings on his back, he turns to persephone like “what have you been saying to him?” “only what he needs to hear, husband”

he has a great fear of actually getting off the ground at first, though

he’ll perch at the edge of a rooftop, but... doesn’t move. it’s a leap of faith he doesn’t feel like he can take

he always saw air as just a medium to move through, that it would support him, as easy as swimming

now he sees straight through it to the ground

he has burn scars across the entire back of his arms, hands, and fingers

it’s a reminder every time he gets to working

rough patchy skin. calloused fingers from work

big sigh

eurydice goes home.

there is the empty shell of his workshop. his many machines and trinkets and tools and his hundreds of unfinisheds and thousands of scraps of plans, and… his bird left to care for the shop after god knows how many weeks or months.

it flies down and greets her, some string of whistles and beeps she only half understands. then it asks for orpheus

she tells it that he fell; he’s not coming back, it’s too late

the bird sticks by her from there on out, the last “living” remnant of her lover, besides his shell of a workshop

ok i haven’t thought farther than this, please have fun with this au i think it’s a new favorite alongside Unswayed AU & Apartments AU