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DYING HEROICALLY was every demigod's dream. Well, if they had to die, that was the preferred way to go out. Leave with a bang! Unfortunately, Florine Baker died rather unexpectedly, and here she was, standing in line for Tartarus with a frown on her face. "This would be the perfect hell already," she muttered under her breath. "How long have you been waiting?" she grabbed the attention of a thirty something year old man with a receding hairline and a permanent frown on his face.
"About. . . twenty hours or so," he replied with a groan as he checked his watch.
Florine scoffed. "I'm not waiting in this stupid line with a bunch of useless mortals." Huffing, she shoved the man aside and started power walking towards the front of the line.
"Ma'am, you can't just—" started the guard that was in charge of ushering the dead into the room to be judged, obviously surprised by the girl's impudent behavior.
"I can, and I will," Florine snapped. "Now where's your supervisor? I can't believe. . . This is the worst day of my goddamn life."
The guard sighed. "Usually the day of your death is. But being a demigod amongst all these mortals doesn't mean you get special treatment. Back of the line." He pointed a sharp finger towards the swaying line, now with even more dead gathered since Florine stepped out of it. It was as long as half a football field, the dead looping around the designated limits various times before coming to a halt before the security guards' ticket booth, where the person who had died would then proceed to receive a ticket verifying that they were in fact dead (Florine was not sure why anyone would feel the need to fake it though, because so far she was convinced that being dead sucked!).
"Listen here, you incompetent asshole! My mother's Hera!" yelled Florine, her eyes blazing red. "There's got to be some sort of mistake! I can't be dead! Not yet!"
"Um. . . hi?" a shaky voice said behind Florine.
The blonde turned around, rage practically radiating off of her body in rolls of steam; where her beating heart used to be was scrunched up with fury and pure irritation at this entire situation. Her knuckles were pale white and her nails were digging into the branches of her palm, neon red crescent marks appearing and fading every few seconds. Toes curled in the Doc Martens she had died in, they were almost bursting at the seams now with how much she had walked through the Underworld, and still the thought that she was dead had refused to fully register in her mind. She was ready to scream at someone else, but the sudden burst of anger dissipated when she saw the slightly familiar figure standing before her. "Silena Beauregard? Is that you?" Florine asked, her jaw slacking in disbelief. She twirled a finger in her glossed golden hair, the straw-like liquid spinning around her skin in tight circles. "You— died?"
Silena only nodded, her brown eyes flickering up and down to study Florine. "And you're the daughter of Hera."
"I prefer child," corrected Florine. "More accurate for half the days."
"Oh," Silena said, and nodded again in realization. She kicked the ombre black and brown sand at her feet, watching it spray the shoes of a few dead people behind her. "I'm sorry you're dead." She sounded sincere, like she truly was apologizing for the fact that the both of them winded up waiting in line to be judged. Which one would it be? Elysium, the Fields of Asphodel, or . . . No. Florine refused to believe she'd get into anything less than Elysium. Maybe she'd even be reincarnated, if things were hopeful enough.
"Thanks," Florine said with a shrug. "Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how it happened. I don't remember how it went down, you know? How I—" She gestured to herself and then to the sign that said: TICKET BOOTH, COLLECT YOUR TICKET TO BE ACCEPTED TO YOUR TRIAL.
"I understand," said Silena with a kind smile. "It all happened so fast I don't. . . The only thing I'm thinking about now is where Beckendorf is. Have you seen him?"
Florine shook her head, her eyebrows stitching together. "I don't know who that is, sorry. I'm sure whoever it is is probably in— I'm guessing this Beckendorf died a while before you did, right?"
"A while, yeah," Silena answered, glancing around with a distant expression taking over her facade. "A while. . . I wonder if he—"
"Is that all?" the guard interrupted dryly. "Well, come on then, there's a whole line behind you. If you're processed to the same place, you can catch up there. Now if you don't mind, there's about a thousand clueless dead people waiting in line here and I need to have them transferred somewhere else so Charon can get here with the next round!"
He escorted Silena through the gates, ushering her to the side and giving her a stapled yellow ticket with a row of numbers on it that spelled out 79282. Florine guessed this was the number of dead people accepted to be judged. . . within the last couple days, maybe, or weeks. This process seemed to be very slow by the looks of it. "Good luck," Florine said curtly.
"Thank you." Silena offered a smile. Her eyes glowed. "I'm going to see Beckendorf again," she whispered, a note of ecstasy and uncertainty lacing her words.
—•—
Instead of heading back to the end of the line, Florine hung back at the front, watching the guard at the ticket booth (who she'd learned was named Hector) and not so patiently observing more and more dead people get accepted through the gates. "Kid, why are you standing there? You know the longer you try to procrastinate your fate, the more you. . ." He gestured towards Florine's hands, which were already fading, gray drawing the outskirts of her finger tips. "The more time you spend waiting here, the more you fade into being fully dead. And you can't mess with destiny. You're supposed to be dead," Hector added nervously as he stapled a ticket, handing it to a little girl who seemed no older than 11 years old.
"Car crash," she explained sadly to Florine— whose expression never wavered— before reluctantly entering the gates. Florine swore she heard the child mumbling to herself, "I have to find Mommy."
The blonde took a deep breath, staring into the distance. Her hands shook as she walked towards the back of the line. Teeth gritting. Chin up. Nails pressed into her palm. Hector was right as much, and as she disliked that guard, she somehow knew that something really bad would happen to her if she denied her death any further.
Death wasn't an easy thing to accept. . . no, it was heavy as cast iron and it was a weight of much pain that set itself over the fraught minds of the wavering. A mere shadow jumping from scene to scene in the train ride that was life, switching from rail track to rail track. In the distance that broken end will always remain, and the passengers on the ride of death will always crash.
Fiddling with the hem of her sleeves, Florine scratched the inside of her wrist. She glanced around the hellish environment that was the waiting room of the Underworld.
Cerberus, the three headed dog, was sat not too far away, keeping a close eye— multiple sets of eyes— on the situation, to make sure no one acted out.
Despite Florine having done so, she was not particularly curious as to why Cerberus hadn't done anything. Just as the same way she regarded the indifferent way that Hector had acknowledged her. Being the child of one of the most influential and infamous gods resulted in many people with those connections to Hera in, say, fearing the consequences of mistreating her dead child. After what felt like another lifetime waiting in line, this time Florine was actually accepted to the ticket booth.
"Back for real this time," Hector commented. He stapled a ticket and handed it to Florine. "Here you go."
Florine snatched it without another word and pushed through the threshold of the gates, awaiting the trial that would determine her fate after death.
—
a/n: YALL IM SO EXCITED FOR THIS AHSJSJS I HAVE SO MUCH PLANNED FOR FLORINE AND SILENA !!
