#i think i know how i'll occupy my time during my upcoming clinic stay xD

[tryingthisfangirlthing]

@viennainspringtime said: May I ask about Bering and Wells Greek mythology? (I don’t trust mobile asks to go through on Tumblr, hence the reply here XD)

Of course you may, and thank you so very much for doing so!

(Also a shoutout to @fouralarmfireinanoilrefinery who expressed interest in this too!)

So this was a completely self-indulgent idea that sprung out of me naming my pet snake Myka (and probably at least a little out of Jaime Murray playing Aphrodite in Valentine).

And the idea started out with just talking!snake!Myka and like Helena wandering the world with a friend around her neck. Then I started reading and looking into mythology a bit more (specifically Medusa and the Gorgons) and it exploded. Again.

Myka went from snake to Gorgon to masked priestess of Athena (as people speculate that the Medusa myth was based on an actual massacre at a temple). I still wanted to get the snake part in somehow, though.

It’s an ever-evolving idea, but the current synopsis is: Helena is some part demigoddess (of uncertain parentage, though she hopes to the high heavens it wasn’t Zeus) with its various perks and downsides. Her daughter died of some stupid run-of-the-mill illness, which simply should not have happened to her child. Being who she is, she’s willing to walk into Hades herself and get her back. (Her daughter’s name is not Christina, because that is not a Greek name; I kind of like Acantha or Iris instead.) Not being utterly out of her mind (yet), she asks the gods, specifically Athena, for help before walking into hell.

Myka was the sole survivor of a temple massacre and has basically been beating herself up about it since, survivor’s guilt and all (maybe cue something about being late, having left the gate open for convenience when she went for a walk, some ordinarily innocuous mistake to parallel her whole Sam’s death complex). She keeps begging Athena for some way to redeem herself, and so finally Athena kind of sighs and gives her a quest, to get Helena out of Hades back alive (because Apollo will be pissed if his currently-favorite-ish daughter is killed and she didn’t at least offer some semblance of help, even if it’s really #not her problem, she’d like to avoid that particular spat, thank you).

And Helena is wondering how on earth a priestess with probably minimal adventuring skills will be of help, but she’s willing to give Myka the benefit of the doubt. They also receive what is supposed to be a smaller sort of oracle, a bit of divine guidance whispering in their ears if they need it, in the form of a talking snake. (Though it seems to want to help, said snake’s guidance is dubious at best and it mostly provides snarky commentary. They were originally going to call it Delphina, but Claudia is the one that stuck.)

Cue the journeying and the talking and the bonding and the learning about each other. Myka has her own “I will protect her with my life — for my goddess, of course” brand of denial. Myka tries to do exactly that, and when she’s struck unconscious by an animal Helena’s heart sticks in her throat, and she covers her fear with fury. Myka reads through it, though, and revels a bit in the care before she guiltily reminds herself of her duty in this. (Athena and Claudia are just shaking their heads at these two idiots.)

Myka starts wondering if she can’t take the friends she lost with her out of Hades, too, and wrestles with the implications of resurrecting a person, wavering between “Athena sent me to help Helena with this” and “she didn’t send me to get her daughter out of Hades, only Helena.” And there’s the regular heroic gauntlet through the guardians of Hades, until they have to petition Persephone. And she’s surprisingly understanding, offers the tour, even allows Helena to see her daughter again — but they can’t take anyone back with them.

Helena tries, screams, cries, but Christina (fine, maybe I will just go with Christina) can’t hear her, or see her, or touch her — but she looks so happy here, running and playing in the fields, such a stark contrast to when she was ill in bed. The hopes Myka hadn’t quite realized she’d been harboring wilt more quietly, and she keeps her promise: she helps a quietly broken Helena up the path back out again. (And it’s just as well that she had someone to be strong for, otherwise she might have just stayed down there and let herself wither away.)

And they talk and process what they’ve both lost — Helena isn’t so blind as to think herself the only one who’d been missing someone dear — and somewhere there’s a quiet kiss, more of comfort than anything else, and they promise one another they’ll start trying to live again, together.

I haven’t actually written much of it yet. I kept starting the damn thing and stopping again because I wasn’t happy with the whole rambling telling introduction thing I fell into. But I think I know how to start now. ^^