,(set: $confrontingHadesPassage to "In your mind, as you walked all that long road to Hadestown, all you needed to do was find Eurydice. She'd see that you'd descended into hell to see her again. You'd tell her how you'd worn holes into your shoes, run from dogs and guards, sang until even the walls built to keep out people like you let you through. She'd know how sorry you were, and you'd fall at her feet and promise to be — a good husband for her, if she wants it. You'd promise that she'd never have to rely on herself, or on a man, ever again.
A little part of you always knew that she might say no, and that you might live the rest of your days with a hole in your life that you hadn't realized was there until she stepped in to fill it. You were braced for it. You hadn't thought that she might not be able to leave. And now, beaten by Hades's workers, tasting blood in your mouth — seeing Hades on a chair he sits on like a throne, and the woman you love crumpled on the floor where one of her fellow workers flung her aside like she was nothing as she shielded you — you have one last chance to save her in the only way you know how.") $confrontingHadesPassage
(set: $godsLinkText to "Sing the song you've been working on.") [[$godsLinkText->Singing Hades and Persephone's Song: 000]]
(set: $injusticeLinkText to "Sing about injustice.") [[$injusticeLinkText->Singing about Injustice: 000]]
(set: $lesbiansLinkText to "Sing about your love for Eurydice.") [[$lesbiansLinkText->Singing about Love: 000]](if: $finalWalkStart is true)[You turn your back on Hadestown, Eurydice and all its workers. You'll know you'll see them in the light of the day. You set out, peering forward into the dark.](else:)[You trudge on, peering forward into the dark.](set: $finalWalkStart to false)
(if: $n > $environmentList's length)[(either: ...$environmentList)](else:)[(print: $environmentList's $n)
(set: $n to $n + 1)]
[[Keep walking.->Walking out of Hadestown with Eurydice]]
[[Look back.->Looking Back]]You [turn]<turnlink| around.
(click: ?turnlink)[You see Eurydice's [eyes]<eyeslink|, shining back at you with reflected sunlight.]
(click: ?eyeslink)[For a [moment]<momentlink|.]
(click: ?momentlink)[And then it seems to you that a chasm opens up behind the deep brown of her eyes, and they look as dark as the depths of the [underworld]<underworldlink|,]
(click: ?underworldlink)[and the look of terror and despair on her face is like one you'd see on the face of a woman feeling the earth fissure and give way beneath her, and beginning to fall into the [depths]<depthslink|.]
(click: ?depthslink)[She's still Eurydice. You know she'd cling on to the edge with her nails if she could. But it's not an [option]<optionlink|.]
(click: ?optionlink)[The distance between you already feels [immeasurable]<immeasurablelink|.]
(click: ?immeasurablelink)[You stretch out your [hand]<handlink| to her —]
(click: ?handlink)[["Eurydice!"]<eurydicelink|]
(click: ?eurydicelink)[She turns her back, and slowly begins trudging the long way back to [Hadestown]<endlink|.]
(click: ?endlink)[Is this the end?
[[Yes.->End]]
[[No.->Workers' Friendship with Eurydice]]]A few steps later, you see her stumble with the weariness she must have been keeping down to follow you.
One of her fellow workers slings her arm over his shoulder. Another takes her by the hand.
And you [realize]<realizelink| —
(click: ?realizelink)[(*She can make you see how the world could be*, Great Uncle Hermes always says of [you]<youlink| —)]
(click: ?youlink)[maybe you couldn't save her, but it doesn't mean she can't be [[saved->Confronting Hades: Final]].]rip to orpheus but i'm different
(css: "font-size: 75%;")[by reconditarmonia
written August 2020]
[[Begin.->Confronting Hades: 000]]*It's an old song
It's an old tale from way back when
It's an old song*
(live: 3s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[*And that is how it ends.*](stop:)]
(live: 6s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[-FIN-](stop:)]
(live: 9s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[[Replay from the beginning?]<replay|](stop:)]
(click: ?replay)[(reload:)]$confrontingHadesPassage
[[Sing.]]You sing the song that you've been working on for what feels like your whole life. The story of the young man that Hades must have been once, before he ruled a legion of workers and built a town as a shell around his heart; of the young woman that Persephone must have been, before she dulled her edges on opium and wine.
You'd laid down your notes and drafts without a second thought when you left to find Eurydice. You're not even sure that you locked the door behind you; they could be litter by now, scattered single sheets blowing along the dirty streets like leaves, your life's work discarded as worthless even by whoever might have wanted to steal your few possessions. But without Eurydice, it's all meaningless anyway.
At the heart of the song, like the stone of a cherry, there's the wordless tune that you've always known you found and didn't compose. And as you sing it, you think you see Hades's stony expression crack a little. You don't know — faces are hard, sometimes — but you hope so.
It's all you have. You hope it's [[finished->Outcome: 100]].You think of the song that you've written. The one that gradually consumed your life, that you missed shifts to write, that you worked on as the snow piled up outside your window until it was too dark to see your frets. You never finished it; and what did it get you but the loss of the woman you loved? You could turn your music into flowers, but not food. And what chance would you have of moving Hades anyway?
Instead, you sing to the workers. You sing everything that's your own in the song you've been working on, because the song is the work you put into it and the life you lived around working on it, not the little tune you heard in your dreams. You sing about how people rise before dawn and work to till the earth and sow the seed, all for nothing when the harvest fails; about how they sell their souls to men like Hades, because when there's no other way out, he can demand them in exchange for a meal and a roof.
What do they gain for themselves in building an endless wall for someone else? Not joy, not the strength to build a better world, not the time to plant a garden. They'd beaten you, and what for? If the workers will let you and Eurydice leave, you don't need Hades's permission.
But there's an electric current of anger that runs through the crowd now. Maybe *this* was the song that would [[set the world right.->Outcome: 010]]You sing about Eurydice, the woman you've moved hell and earth to save. The shadows that her eyelashes cast on her cheeks in the moments before she wakes, the purity of her voice; how she would curl herself into a tiny ball in bed, but stir and let you into the circle of her arms when you crawled in beside her.
(She seized and kissed you the moment the door closed for the first time on the room you'd rented together. "I should have told her we were sisters, she thinks we're living in sin."
"Oh, is that why she was looking at me like that?"
She raised her eyebrow teasingly at you. "Could've been anything."
But she was laughing, because you were already going to your knees and lifting her skirt. "I'll protect your virtue," you said, grinning up at her. "I swear on my manhood.")
The way, in spite of herself, her eyes lit up the first time you plucked a flower from the air with your song, and she believed that you could throw yourself against the world and win. How she was the first person to understand you; how you couldn't remember a life before you'd met her without thinking of where she might have been back then or imagining her there at the edge of your vision, as fate tightened the strings and drew you closer to the moment you would meet.
She's everything to you, more than music. What will you do without her, where will you go? [[Eurydice, Eurydice —->Outcome: 001]]The king of the mines offers his hand to the queen, and, in a world of their own, they [dance]<dancelink|.
(click: ?dancelink)[You keep singing, from outside that world, afraid to stop and break the spell, as the sound of your voice and the chords from your guitar, small and lonely in such a large space, echo from the [stone]<stonelink|.]
(click: ?stonelink)[But even gods, it seems, can tire, and eventually Hades stills, lowering Persephone into a final dip. When he straightens up, he looks at [you]<youlink|.]
(click: ?youlink)["Little [[songbird->Songbird]]," he says.]Hades dismisses the workers back to the wall and the machines with a wave. "Stay here. Sing for us," he says to you. "Turn back time" — you hear *time* in music, the fractured rhythms of the present that could someday be whole and steady again, and *time* in the millennia since Hades won Persephone — "you'll be a fine canary for our mine."
Your heart seizes in your chest. You wish that you'd taken more time to feel the wind on your cheeks and the back of your neck, biting though it was, and the sun on your closed eyelids, wintery and watery though it was, before you went under the ground forever.
"What about Eurydice?" you whisper.
"She can leave," Persephone interjects smoothly. "What's one girl instead of another? Great tycoon Mr. Hades, don't act like you've never edited a contract before." She ascends the stairs to the office; Hades follows, lifting the hem of her skirt to bring it to his cheek briefly. "You know where to find us when you're ready to sign." The doorway yawns huge and black, and you wonder if you'll find yourself in there without Persephone someday.
[[Tell Eurydice about their offer.]]Hades's eyes flash with anger, more like an explosion than a storm. "Get out of here," he rumbles. "Anarchist! You want to take one of my workers from me? [Go ahead]<goaheadlink|."
(click: ?goaheadlink)[He speaks to the workers. "Hear that, children? A get-out-of-jail-free card! A free ticket away from a bed to sleep in and food every day — and all she needed to do was [sing for it]<singforitlink|!"]
(click: ?singforitlink)[To you: "A first-class ticket back on my train, and you can even tear up the [contract]<contractlink| yourself —]
(click: ?contractlink)[for any of them but [her]<herlink|."]
(click: ?herlink)[You feel sick. And you see hope in the workers' eyes, for the first time.
[[Accept his offer.]]]You fancied yourself someone who'd save the world; you couldn't forgive yourself if you refused to save one person. Eurydice had insisted you finish your song because it would bring back spring to the people; you couldn't look her in the eye again — if you should ever have that chance — if you said no.
Which worker will you save? (set: $endQuestion010 to "Is this the end?
[[Yes.->End]]
[[No.->Confronting Hades: 010]]")
[[The oldest.]]
[[The youngest.]]$confrontingHadesPassage
[[$godsLinkText->Singing Hades and Persephone's Song: 000]]
[[$injusticeLinkText->Singing about Injustice: 100]]
[[$lesbiansLinkText->Singing about Love: 100]]$confrontingHadesPassage
[[$godsLinkText->Singing Hades and Persephone's Song: 001]]
[[$injusticeLinkText->Singing about Injustice: 001]]
[[$lesbiansLinkText->Singing about Love: 000]]$confrontingHadesPassage
[[$godsLinkText->Singing Hades and Persephone's Song: 010]]
[[$injusticeLinkText->Singing about Injustice: 000]]
[[$lesbiansLinkText->Singing about Love: 010]]Hades expects you to plead for your life, you think. Or for Eurydice's. A five-minute slot to persuade him that your love is worth saving.
But how could you ever hope to move him by singing of that love? You're two hungry girls who found each other in a world that didn't want to let you survive; to let you be the way you are, to let her love you. What does the love between the two of you have in common with a marriage founded on conquest?
So you sing the song that you lost Eurydice for. You sing of how beautiful Persephone must have been in that golden age, walking through fields before they were dust and forests before they were mown down to feed furnaces. Of the time before Hadestown, before Hades thought that a million hungry workers building a steel and concrete wall around his city could shore up his own empty heart. Did he ever love something he didn't want to [[cage->Outcome: 101 (001)]]?Everyone here has a story like Eurydice's, you think. Every worker here once pulled their coat closer against the wind and yearned for spring and warmth, reached out in the cold to offer a hand to someone or to cling to someone else's hand. Found the sunlight they needed in someone else's eyes and made their arms someone else's shelter from the storm. Scrounged for food like her and worked their hands to the bone until things got so bad that their hunger drove them to Hadestown, leaving everyone they loved behind. And then forgot the names and faces of the people they loved so much, and everything unique about themselves, heads bent over the machines. Eurydice will forget.
You can't stand here and plead only for yourself. If you don't all stand with each other, every one of you will be ground into the dust. So you urge them to raise their heads and look at each other. To think of how unfair it is that they loved and were loved, once, and traded those memories for work and food. To love each other, because [[they're the only ones they have->Outcome: 011]].You sing the song that your blood and sweat went into. As though you could wind back time like a film reel, melding iron back into rock and covering it with soil and flowers and wheat, turning coal and oil into grass and trees, smoky hot clouds into white ones. As though you'd see the white hairs on Hades's head replaced with black, the lines on Persephone's face smoothed out.
You know it might hurt. Gods have long memories, and Hades can't have forgotten what things used to be like when he first fell in love with Persephone, can't help feeling how vast the gulf is between then and now. He must hate you. But keeping Eurydice trapped here in the dark won't bring Persephone back to him.
But you're sure there's one thing, for all his long memory, that he's [[forgotten.->Outcome: 101 (001)]]<!-- retarget if time -->No one had stayed long enough to know you, or for you to know them, before. You saw people pass through the railroad station likes dried leaves carried by a draft, a quick nod or a smile before they left your life again, saw the world slowly die around you year by year. You were angry, sometimes, but what could you do but pour yourself into your music?
Then Eurydice stumbled into your life, and you lived months of courtship in moments, as though your hearts had been speaking to each other in secret all this time and it was only your words that had to catch up. There was no divine inspiration like her voice or the sight of her, outside with the sun on her face or naked with you in bed; no anger or despair ever spurred you to write like love did. You'd both thought you were so alone.
And you'd fought to love her, and she you. You'd taken each other's hands under the table, sitting in the station if she was there when you were on your break. Once or twice, you'd led her out to dance when the boys led their girls out; she would borrow a pair of scissors on a Saturday morning and carefully cut your hair short. You don't blame her for leaving you; you love her fierce will to live, the flame of her life that hunger could have snuffed out, the hope that she pretended not to have. You only wish you'd done a better job of fighting for her. Please, let this be [[enough.->Outcome: 011]]You've thought for so long, head bent over your papers or over your guitar, that you were unearthing a love story. Brushing the dirt of millennia off, bending it back into shape where it was bent, and if you could only polish the heart of it back to a shine, then the world would be right again.
But that's not it, is it? You stand under the earth in the city that Hades made, the one Eurydice and all these workers fled to because the winter up above was too much to bear, and you realize you've been going about it the wrong way all this time. It's about the dirt. About the dents. The rust. It's about how Hades and Persephone can't bear six months of heartbreak for the sake of every other person in the world who needs a harvest if they're going to eat.
So you sing about that. About how their discords put the whole world out of tune, not just their own house and their own bed, because they're the kings and queens and you're not. They're the gods and you're not. They own every speck of dust and every cell here, and there's nothing you or Eurydice or any of these workers can do to bring the spring back if they don't bring it back. There's nothing you can do to bring Eurydice back if they don't care enough to let you.
You don't expect it to accomplish anything; you're half-turned to go. Until you listen to the echoes in the room as they fade, and realize that some of the workers have been [[humming along with you->Outcome: 011]]. <!-- retarget if time -->You've spent your whole life writing a different song — a ballad of gods, kings and queens. You thought that it was your sacred calling, the song that would bring the world back into tune. But here, face to face with Hades in the flesh, it seems pointless. What do you — a little bulldagger musician who washes dishes for her daily bread in a dying town, the last stop on the road to hell — have in common with this man? How could you ever have hoped to know his soul well enough to give it form in music, to recapture the feelings he might have felt in a younger world, in a voice that's true enough to move him?
Instead, you sing what you know. Maybe the only thing you truly know — your love for Eurydice. Your fear of losing her, your need to hold her, everything bright and sharp and full of life about her that would wear away and be lost here underground. The hope which her cynicism couldn't hide completely. How you stretched out your hand to her and knew, always, that you'd find her hand; how she let you into her guarded heart, and how you found that a world of your own could hold another person. How you'd walked through deserts and through walls to find her, and how you'd walk through fire.
Hades would have to be made of stone himself not to be [[moved->Outcome: 101 (100)]].It takes you a little while to find Eurydice, among the workers at the machines. You touch her shoulder, and she shakes you off once or twice, eyes fixed on her work, before she realizes it's you and steps away from the machine.
"Hades wants me to stay here," you tell her, tasting the words like ashes. For a second, she only looks bemused; expecting to hear her fate, not yours. But you see the full meaning behind what you've said strike her, and she hides her face in your shirt before you can see her expression change any further; she's never liked for anyone, even you, to see her cry.
Then your brain catches up, and you realize: it's not just that you'll never see the moon or the flowers again, or feel the rain or the sun on your face, or taste an orange. You'll never see *her* again.
[[Tell her that she's allowed to leave in your place.]]
[[Don't tell her.]]
(set: $revolutionPassage to "(if: $eurydiceStaying)[You'll take care of her, you promise(if: $betrayal)[ yourself]. You won't let her forget who she is. Never. ]You won't sing for the king and queen alone; you'll sing to remind (if: $eurydiceStaying)[her and the other] (else:)[the] workers of the life up above, and maybe someday you'll sing a song that'll shake these stones until they all come [down]<endlink|.
(click: ?endlink)[Is this the end?
[[Yes.->End]]
[[No.->Confronting Hades: 100]]]")(set: $eurydiceStaying to false)(set: $betrayal to false)(if: (random: 1,2) < 2)[(set: $eurydiceStaying to true)] You have to tell her. The only thing worse than losing her would be to cage her.
"But you can go," you say, touching her hair with short, light strokes. "They can put my name on your contract, Persephone said."
You feel, rather than hear, her gasp against your chest; her hands fist in the back of your shirt.
She holds you like that for a long [time]<timelink|. (click: ?timelink)[When she finally lifts her head, her eyes are dry. (if: $eurydiceStaying is true)["No."
You'd thought that you were the one who was risking the most, who was the bravest. But no, it was always her, wasn't it, since the very beginning when she chose to be with you?
$revolutionPassage](else:)["Yes."
You have this: this moment to look at her, and memorize every detail of her face with your eyes and hands, that you never got when she left. You wish, so hard your head hurts, that you weren't leaving her alone in the world again.
Once you've signed your papers, Hades lets you walk with Eurydice as far as the Styx. Slowly, carefully, so you can look at each other; you both speak and sing until you feel like you've been bled dry, saving up each other's voices to ration out in the long winters ahead. Then she's gone.
$revolutionPassage]](set: $betrayal to true)(set: $eurydiceStaying to true) You can't lose her again. At least you'll have each other.
Eventually, you have to let go of Eurydice and go sign your papers. Hades doesn't seem surprised when you ask him for a new contract for yourself, instead of putting your name on hers.
$revolutionPassageYou put [words]<wordslink| to the tune that's haunted your dreams since you were young. (click: ?wordslink)[You sing about the future you dream of, where the spring flowers grow up through the ruins of walls, and gods and men and women work side by side. The fight to get there, to break the chains that hold you. You sing about Eurydice until your heart [breaks]<breakslink|.]
(click: ?breakslink)[You [fail]<faillink|.]
(click: ?faillink)[And when you fail the test, and walk out of hell [alone]<alonelink| —]
(click: ?alonelink)[you teach your song to the workers and the vagrants and the students and the children. You hop on a train and take it to another city, and another. You ask them to teach it, too. You [plant a seed]<seedlink|.
(live: 8s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[[[(And that's it. Show's over.)->End]]](stop:)]]respond to: privilege of kings/gods, EITHER going broke or keeping eurydice won't bring back persephone"But there's a condition."
You'd do anything.
"She'll follow you all the way out. If you turn back — that's it."
You don't understand, but you trust Eurydice. [[Together you can face anything.->Walking Out of Hadestown]] (set: $anyoneWalking to true)(set: $walking to 0)When your face is bathed in sweat, when you feel, at last, like you've spun out the arteries of your heart into notes and chords and they've died away into the air, you look at [Hades]<hadeslink|.
(click: ?hadeslink)[Hades's face could be carved from the stone of the city itself. You've never been so conscious of how very long he's lived.
Persephone, too, you see as you've never seen or thought of her before: a god in truth, the [queen of the underworld]<queenlink|.]
(click: ?queenlink)[It's Persephone who speaks. "Orpheus, we'll grant you [this]<thislink| —]
(click: ?thislink)[do you know how long it's been since we've heard music like that [down here]<downherelink|?]
(click: ?downherelink)[My husband's gonna call off his dogs — you can walk out of here [alive]<alivelink|."]
(click: ?alivelink)["What about Eurydice?" you ask, as bewildered as a child.
"Don't test my patience, girl," Hades rumbles.
So this is the limit of your [gifts]<giftslink|.]
(click: ?giftslink)[You put up your fists, desperate and absurd. But the workers close in on you in response to a snap from Hades's fingers, and you know you can't survive another beating. There's only one thing you can do. You lower your hands, and catch Eurydice's eye.
[[Sing to Eurydice.]]]There's barely time. Before the workers come up like a wall between you; before Eurydice melts into that crowd like a person drowning in a river. What will you sing, so that she can hold on to the memory as the endless years march on? (set: $endQuestion001 to "Is this the end?
[[Yes.->End]]
[[No.->Confronting Hades: 001]]")
[[Sing about the love the two of you shared.]]
[[Sing about the world up above.]]You sing a few lines of the song you courted each other with, a riddle and a dance and a pledge all in one. If she shuts her eyes at the end of a day of work and dreams of a feather bed that's a gift from the birds — all you can hope is that she'll dream of lying next to you, too.
Then you're [gone]<gonelink|.
(click: ?gonelink)[$endQuestion001]You sing a few bars of the tune to which you and all the others danced the dance of the easy life. If she finds herself humming it at a machine, years from now, and remembers for a brief moment the summer sun and the taste of fruit and wine — you've done all you could.
Then you're [gone]<gonelink|.
(click: ?gonelink)[$endQuestion001]You take the hand of the oldest worker you see. You don't know how long he's been here. For all you know, he might crumble to dust when you've crossed the Styx — but he deserves an end to his labor. He doesn't look at you.
You ride the train away from Hadestown together. You try to talk to him, to find out who he was, who he left behind, but he doesn't remember. He knows the rhythm of the assembly line, the factory whistle, the familiar hunch of his body under a weight. The sound of his breath is as regular as a machine.
At last, you reach the end of the tunnel, and he blinks against the light. "Thank you," he says, and tells you his [name]<namelink|.
(click: ?namelink)[$endQuestion010]You take the hand of the youngest worker you see. Maybe she has people who miss her; maybe it hasn't yet been long enough for her to forget everything.
You ride the train away from Hadestown together. You try to talk to her, to find out who she was, who she left behind. She tells you about her sisters, the mother who lost her job, the first gleam of sunlight over the roofs of the facing building. But she doesn't remember their names, or her own, or the name of the town she comes from.
Even when you emerge from the tunnel, and she blinks, smiling, against the light, she doesn't remember. You part ways with her at the station; she might choose another train out of here to get on, or Great Uncle Hermes will help her, but you can't see her and not think of Eurydice [trapped down there]<trappedlink|.
(click: ?trappedlink)[$endQuestion010](if: $walking is 0)[You turn your back on Hadestown and start walking.](if: $walking is 1)[Your feet grow weary. It's a long road. You hope Eurydice can walk it. What if she falls behind? Gets hurt, or gets lost in the caverns?](if: $walking is 2)[What if you made the wrong choice? She stayed with you for so much longer than she should have. What if she's following you because you came so far, and because it hurts you so much to be without her, even when she could have food and firewood in Hadestown?](if: $walking is 3)[What if she isn't following you at all?](if: $walking is 4)[You feel incredibly alone, here in the dark and cold. Like you haven't since before you met her. Gullible, and clumsy, and naive! How could you have thought that you were enough? That you could have what you wanted and be happy?](if: $walking is 5)[What if she was never following you?]
(if: $walking < 5)[[[Keep walking.->Walking Out of Hadestown]]]
(if: $anyoneWalking is true)[[[Look back.->Looking Back: 101]]] (else:)[[[Look back.->Looking Back: 011]]] (set: $walking to $walking + 1)You can't bear it any longer. You [turn around]<turnaroundlink|. Even mid-turn, you realize it's a mistake, that you've lost her through your own weakness —
(click: ?turnaroundlink)[There's someone there, but it's [not Eurydice]<noteurydicelink|.] (click: ?noteurydicelink)[Just another worker. You taste bile in the back of your throat, at Hades for tricking you and at yourself for being tricked, at yourself for ever mistaking their footsteps for hers —
They drop a [note]<notelink| on the ground, and turn back towards Hadestown.]
(click: ?notelink)["Once you've lost someone, you can't get them back. Doesn't matter how much you regret it. I've known that for a long time.
H."
So this is what Hades's [compassion looks like]<compassionlink|.]
(click: ?compassionlink)[Is this the end?
[[Yes.->End]]
[[No.->Confronting Hades: 111]]]$confrontingHadesPassage
<!-- code these properly -->
[[$godsLinkText->Singing Hades and Persephone's Song: 111]]
[[$injusticeLinkText->Singing about Injustice: 111]]
[[$lesbiansLinkText->Singing about Love: 111]]You [hold your breath —]<breathlink|
(click: ?breathlink)[and one worker steps out of the mass, pushing her goggles and cap back off her head.
Then [another, and another]<anotherlink|.]
(click: ?anotherlink)[They raise their eyes and look around, as though it's been a long time since they've seen the world from this angle. They look each other wonderingly in the eye. You see one or two of them weep.
Shoulder against shoulder, they take up the song. Your song.
You face Hades, feeling like a general with an army at your back, and [he says:]<hesayslink|]
(click: ?hesayslink)[[["She can leave."->Hades Lets You Leave: 011]]]You can't bear it any longer. You have to know. You [turn around]<turnaroundlink|.
(click: ?turnaroundlink)[There's [no one there]<noteurydicelink|. No footprints but your own.]
(click: ?noteurydicelink)[Your head spins and your vision blurs; you're overcome with anger, but more than that, with shame.
Hades never lied to you, did he? *All his children*, he said, if you could make it to the surface without looking back. Eurydice was one of them. He told you they'd be free if you could trust yourself, trust in Eurydice, enough to march forward until you reached the world you wanted.
The king of the walls knew you couldn't. Even if Eurydice had been right behind you, she'd have had to turn and go [back]<backlink|.]
(click: ?backlink)[You almost wish she had been, so that you could see her [one more time]<compassionlink|.]
(click: ?compassionlink)[Is this the end?
[[Yes.->End]]
[[No.->Confronting Hades: 111]]]Double-click this passage to edit it.
You tune your guitar, feeling your blood pounding. You've worked so long and so hard on this song, and you know it's not ready, not perfect, but this is the time.
The beginning is almost a hymn — the god and goddess's titles and epithets, their tale as familiar as a childhood fable. Love at first sight, images of an older world you know only from stories, where miles of fields and hills grew green in the spring and golden in the fall. How Persephone changed Hades's life in an instant, and how he loved her enough that he couldn't be without her, even as the tighter he held her, not trusting her to return, the more she slipped out of his fists like water.
And you keep going — this isn't something you wrote before, when you had time to tinker until you knew it was right, you're dashing out on a high wire without a net — you don't sing only about a past that's lost. You sing about a future where these wounds are mended, and the spring and fall come in their proper time and people come together to sow and harvest and work, to share a table and to make music together. When Hades and Persephone come together again, to walk hand in hand beside you all into the world that you dream of.
At the heart of the song, like grit in an oyster, there's the wordless tune that you've always known wasn't yours. You've harmonized it a thousand ways, thought of a thousand variations, but it's [[always that tune->Hades Lets You Leave: 111]]. <!-- include Hades and Persephone dance -->Your whole life, you've played for ordinary people. The ones who come through the station on the way to the next six months, if they're lucky, of work, the ones who forget their day or their week with a drink or a few in a bar. You buried your head deeper and deeper into the arcane music of the song that would bring back the seasons, chasing the rabbit, but they were always the people you sang for. You won't abandon them now, even standing before the king of silver and gold; it's not as though you'd ever imagined that you'd sing your life's work *for* him.
You sing to the workers about themselves. The strength that gets them through the day, the kindness that makes them extend a hand to someone else and the poverty that makes them mean and fearful. What they could build together if they tried, and everything that keeps them from trying. You and Eurydice have always been part of them; you've known that hunger.
Hades has no right to choose your future, or that of any person here. No right to demand anyone's soul for bread, no matter how much money he has and how little you have. You know that this isn't the best that things could be, even if that's what he says, even if he truly believes it. That there is a [[point to fighting->Hades Lets You Leave: 111]]. <!-- outcome? -->The last time you'd seen Eurydice before you found her here, you'd barely looked up to spare her a glance as you hurried to get out your notebook, your hands flexing as you imagined playing, ecstatic revelations of the music that could save the earth bursting upon your mind. Since then, you'd tried a thousand times to fix that last glance on the insides of your eyelids; her dark eyes, her bare shoulders (had she sold her coat for food?), the look of pain on her face. You'd forgotten your own love to concern yourself with the gods'. Now you sing of it as though this, more than anything, is the truest magic spell.
Each finger on her hand, red and cracked in the winter with cold or work, smooth and soft in the spring, ringed in metal and beads, so that they caught the light when she moved her hands. Her unexpected joy, and how she'd taken care of you and let you take care of her. The strength of her embrace. How hard she wanted to believe that spring would come. Everything about her that you can't bear to imagine sanded down to nothing down here.
You want another chance at a life with her. A chance to try harder. And she deserves one. [[They all do->Hades Lets You Leave: 111]].<!-- outcome? -->When you look back at Hades, he doesn't look like a god anymore. He looks like a man. Tired, longing, enchanted, fearful, angry. Like any of the workers around him, no longer machines made of flesh, but [men and women]<menandwomenlink|.
(click: ?menandwomenlink)[The words come to your lips: "Can we leave?" You hear it like an echo: *can we leave, can we leave*. In different voices, murmuring and overlapping, *we can*, *we leave*, *[we can leave]<leavelink|*.]
(click: ?leavelink)[Hades looks around. At the woman who could be his again, at the workers who'll never be his again. You can't read his expression [at all]<againlink|.]
(click: ?againlink)[["Yes."]<yeslink|]
(click: ?yeslink)[He looks at you. "But people can't just leave Hadestown. So you'll walk back the whole way you came, and if you look back to make sure she's with you, then she and all the rest of them come back to me. You, girl, can go wherever you want [from there]<therelink|."]
(click: ?therelink)[You barely hear his conditions. You're filled with so much joy you don't know how to [[hold it->Walking out of Hadestown with Eurydice]].]{(set: $finalWalkStart to true)(set: $n to 1)
(set: $environmentList to (shuffled: "You sing as you walk. Anything — your fragmented and discarded attempts at the song that would bring back spring and fall, imaginary jingles you'd make up for the pushcarts and the dive bars and the long-empty storefronts a lifetime ago, the riddling folksongs she courted you with that seemed more magical than any symphony. Protest music you heard in the streets from the strikers and the unemployed as you hurried past, your first dance, the ballad of your own love story. An end to that ballad where you both walk out of hell and buy a little cottage with a field and an orchard and live happily ever after — where the summer sees the two of you take a tram to the beach, and you crouch shoulder-deep before stripping off your striped bathing costume and pulling at her skirt to get her to join you naked in the water, and where in the winter you doze off together in a single armchair in front of a cozy fire.
Eurydice sings along. Or, you hope it's her, and not your own voice bouncing off the cavern walls and coming back to you distorted. Your voices have never been all that different.","You take a step forward and feel something soak your shoe and trouser hem. You throw your arm back to catch Eurydice before she walks into it too, but you feel no one.
When you screw up your eyes and look down, you see that you'd stepped into a rivulet of dark sludge, flowing from the lightless shell of a factory that must be long dead.","You begin to see discarded mining tools strewn across the ground, and realize that the distant reddish glow lighting them isn't the glow of a lantern. As you continue forward, the glow gets brighter, and the air gets hotter and thicker with smoke. You daren't turn back, so you take your bandana from your neck and hold it behind you, to Eurydice. Maybe she's too far behind you to take it, and you don't want to linger here; you tie it over your own mouth and hope that she still has her scarf. Soon you come to a gash in the earth. When you look down, you see, deep down, a fire burning.","You climb over hills of rubble and into valleys of dust. When you bring your hand closer to your eyes, you see that the dust that's gathered under your fingernails and in the cracked skin of your hands is rusty red.","Your footsteps are the only sound you can hear; there are no animals in these dead caverns. The echoes send them back to you over and over again, the steady beat of your feet turning into the sound of an avant-garde percussion ensemble, until you can't tell how many of you there are walking this road.","You walk along a narrow passage between two rusted chain-link fences. They rattle with the nearness of your passing. The tiny sound sets your teeth on edge, and you run your hand along the fence as you keep going.","You wonder what would happen if you turned around. Would Eurydice and the workers vanish before your eyes? Or could you go back with them to the edge of Hadestown and say your final farewells?","You follow a twisted, abandoned railroad track for a ways, until it goes beneath the water in a flooded tunnel. You edge carefully around the water, trying to stay on higher ground.","You think you feel the breath of a breeze on your lips. When you follow where you think it came from, you find a great heap of stone and slag, blocking off any passage that might exist. You pull at the stones with your hands — \"Let me do it,\" you say, in case you accidentally catch a glimpse of Eurydice or the workers — but only seem to bring more stones tumbling down on you from above, and you have to stop.","You stumble over something. When you look down, you realize it's a ribcage.","When you get out, you'll heat water on the little stove in the apartment you and Eurydice share, and bathe her limb by limb, wash the soot out of her hair. You'll tuck her into bed and let her sleep for a week, if she wants. When she wakes up, you'll have something hot cooking. Whatever's left, because you won't let her leave your sight again for a long time, not even so you can go out and search for food.","What will happen to the workers when you reach the surface, you wonder. Will they want you to lead them, as they did when you were their only way out? You don't know if that would be a good idea, if they should trust you further than to press forward on this road. You've failed before.
What will they remember? Their names, their pasts — are those gone forever, or only lying dormant under the ground? Will they remember Hades and his factory, or the workers beside them on the assembly line?
Will they remember you at all?","You wish you could take Eurydice's hand.","It would be easy to get lost down here. The road to Hadestown is a hard one, but all you had to do was keep going, avoid the guards, avoid the dogs. Every few minutes, now, you're afraid that you've made a wrong turn into one of the mineshafts that Hadestown abandoned when it had devoured everything the earth around it had to offer and moved on further and deeper. Maybe the way out is behind you.","You talk aloud, spinning out wild fantasies. You'd said, that first day, that Eurydice would come home with you and be yours, and she did. Now you speak your wishes into the echoing emptiness of the tunnels before you: You'll trade a song for a ticket and win the lottery! You'll wear diamond cufflinks and Eurydice will have a different fur coat for each day of the week, and two for Sundays! You'll eat steak whenever you want, even if it's breakfast! You'll sing a single note, and masses of flowers will bloom from your hands!
It'll be enough to be cleaning tables and dishes in the station again, if only she'll be there, watching you as you hurry to finish so you can talk to her."))}It takes a few moments for Hades to recognize that tune that you've heard in the back of your mind since you were a young girl. But when he does, he starts up from his chair; you fear his anger, but his face only seems to be filled with an indescribable [sorrow]<sorrowlink|.
(click: ?sorrowlink)[Persephone holds up her hand to halt him, and he takes it and pulls her into a [dance]<dancelink|.]
(click: ?dancelink)[The dance seems as ancient as the tune, full of secret nuance that you can't understand, but they both know [every step of it]<everystep|, every move of the other's body.]
(click: ?everystep)[But when your voice grows hoarse and you bring the song to an end, Hades gathers Persephone close and looks over her shoulder at the kingdom he's built, and when he finally releases her, he [says to you:]<sayslink|]
(click: ?sayslink)[[["Take her."->Hades Lets You Leave: 101]]]You finish, your voice breaking, and realize there are tears on your cheeks. Hades sits stone-still in his chair. You don't know what's caught up in his gaze: Persephone, his mines, his mind's eye. Persephone's gaze is fixed on him, [unblinking]<unblinkinglink|.
(click: ?unblinkinglink)[Then, like a wall crumbling, he bows his head and hides his face in his hand.
An eternity passes in [moments]<momentslink|.]
(click: ?momentslink)[[["Take her."->Hades Lets You Leave: 101]]]Hades walks up to you briskly, but it's to pull the microphone stand closer. His deep voice echoes across the factory floor as he addresses the workers.
"But there's a condition.
You want to follow her? Take it from someone who's always taken care of you — before you trust someone else to lead you, see if she can do it.
It can't be hard for such a visionary to keep looking forward, can it?
If she gets out without looking back, all my children can leave. But I think you'll see how [[difficult it is->Walking Out of Hadestown]]." (set: $anyoneWalking to false)(set: $walking to 0)