Work Text:
The being – not quite a man, not quite a god – had been called many different things by many different people, throughout his – not quite a – life. Dionysus by those who revered the witch’s veil, Bakhos by those who sang to the mad god’s mask. Polyeidos. He of the Trees. Lord of the Dance. King of the Holy Raging.
Ivy, only the once.
But that did not bear thinking of. It was one thing to promise an eventual return – another thing entirely to fulfil that vow after a decade or more of silence. That was long by a mortal’s reckoning, was it not? The boy who all called Phaidros had now become a man. Who was to say a brief companionship in his boyhood would still matter to him? Perhaps he had forgotten it.
(Perhaps that would be best. For him.)
But Phaidros had been kind, and deserved to be repaid in kind. The witch-god-man refused to be Hades, snatching at the hem of Persephone’s cloak. He could wait, and hope, and believe in something beyond even him.
Yet the day that Phaidros’ prayer found him –
The being had been called many different things, but he had never been called home.