Work Text:
1.
The world does not still when Sally Jackson is born.
It continues its axis; it revolves around its sun.
2.
Water did break when you were born, is what Sally Jackson's mother told her while growing up.
The fire's warmth welcomed you into this world, is what her father told her.
The latter is more understandable than the former but she doesn't know what it meant. She still doesn't know what it means. and she had asked.
"Mama, what does that mean?"
(Her mother was a warm woman. Her father was too, just more on the wildfire side for how fiercely he loved.)
"It means you're special, meri jaan."
"Abu, what does that mean? What you just said."
"It means that you're our angel. A blessing." He poked her, eyes crinkled. She had laughed.
And then, a few days later, Estelle (Sitara) and Jim (Azaad) Jackson's plane crashed.
Everything is ripped from her grasp.
3.
Estelle and Jim Jackson aren't her parents names. Their not their actual, real ones.
They're immigrants from Pakistan, she knows that. Changed their names into more 'American' ones than foreign, more white, because the Western World doesn't like something they're not familiar with.
White people always treat them with wariness, still. At least the older ones do, the ones raised with more stricter ideals and more stricter times. Her parents always hid her behind them, guarding her; the force of nature.
(Her parents always warn her of the more intense ones. Of the ones who hate people like them but can't help but want them. Fetishize. Because 'exotic' is something from outisde countries, not America. Exotic, like they so call people like her and her family.)
Her mom's name is Sitara, after stars. Her dad's name is Azaad, after liberation; in all meanings: free and unrestrained.
Or, was.
Everything's past tense now.
4.
Her uncle takes five-year-old Sally in.
He's not meant for taking care for a kid. He's not made for it. And it's clear by the way he grumbles whenever he looks at Sally, or rolls his eyes. She grows, and she learns. Learns how to take care of herself, especially.
She tries her best. Tries her hardest. Makes the meals, takes care of herself and her uncle, gets good grades and high marks. Makes him happy: tries.
Sally misses her parents. She may be a teenager now, but she wants the lullabies, she wants the hugs, and the blankets, brushing hair. She wants everything.
She wants.
But she's always been alone.
Writing is an escape, though. She found writing one day, tried her hand in it, and got sucked in and never came back out.
Writing does tend to make you feel that way. To be that way.
Both an escape, and a tether to reality.
Her uncle has cancer, the nurses tell her when she leaves school early and rushes to the hospital. And she knows, and Sally's heart droops.
Her uncle may not be like her parents, and it's mostly been her raising herself, he's still family. The only family left that she knows.
(She never wanted to be alone.)
There isn't enough money for chemotherapy.
Sally Jackson drops out of school, in the middle of senior year, gets another job on top of the two she has and runs ragged. Writing is no escape anymore, because there is simply no time to write and have a moment of peace because her uncle's dying and she's taking care of him. She doesn't talk to friends anymore, there's no time, and she doesn't even dare to do her schoolwork.
In summer, after everyone has graduated, after she would have graduated, her uncle dies. The money in his bank account and the money she's earned go toward his funeral, and there's hardly a few people who show up. He's buried, and she cries; silent.
Sally sells furniture, whatever antiques and trinkets he used to have, and places the house on sale with the realtor before leaving. Before running.
This is not something she wants to remember. This place, this period of time, she wants nothing to do with it. And so, she runs. She leaves.
(She's never wanted to be alone, though.)
5.
Montauk, when she was five and before five, was where she was practically raised. It's where her parents used to take her, every weekend, almost always with no fail.
They had their own cabin, and they used to stay there everytime. Breathing the air, hearing the waves, cleaning the cabin up.
There's a woman who helps with the grocery shopping, and she tells Sally of a cafe that's hiring, and that she knows a person who needs help with their kids.
Sally accepts the jobs, accepts the numbers. And within a few days, she's familiar with the kids. They're cute, they're sweet, and are no trouble at all. She doesn't mind taking care of them when their mother needs to go somewhere. She's always loved kids. She's always wanted to be a mother. It's been a dream of hers.
Job Two is more of a hassle, but she manages. If she managed to raise herself, than dealing with customers: taking their orders, giving them their stuff, is fairly easy, compared to that.
She gets a steady income. Money comes in. Soon, she'll start classes again, and finish high school, get her GED and graduate. And then next year, she'll go to university. She'll try; her hardest. That's what she's been doing for years.
Sally bumps into a man when she's on the beach, in the morning. She always comes here, breathes the fresh air before she starts her day.
She trips, she falls. Thankfully, it's sand and not pavement. No bruises, no scrapes, nothing.
"I'm so sorry. I should've watched where I was going. My name's Poseidon," the man she bumped into says, offering a hand.
Sally takes it, pulls herself up and brushes sand off herself. "It's okay. You don't need to apologise. I should've watched where I was going." She narrows her eyes at him, looks at him considerately, and smiles. "I'm Sally."
(She's lonely. She's open to friends.)
"Hi Sally, it's nice to meet you." Poseidon says, green eyes and dark hair that's untameable.
"You too. Poseidon." A smile is permanently etched onto her face. She looks at the time, and her smile's replaced by a frown. "I've got work. I'm sorry to leave you. But it was nice meeting you, Poseidon. Have a good day!"
Eyes narrow after her (before a face smiles).
6.
At five, or before, in Montauk, in the ocean, she had felt an unattainable calmness, her head almost under.
Unattainable, because calmness like this never comes. It always is a warning, something you tread lightly and carefully. It's some sign. And yet—
The water seeping into her bones, drowning in her skin, light shining. She doesn't remember what had happened before. She doesn't remember what had happened after, either. Maybe she had seen the waves tugging, pushing and pulling, the sun in the sky, sinking, the horizon a gold, and she wondered what it meant to vanish. To not exist; disappear, to be engulfed. Present day shows her water sliding through her fingers. To be engulfed, to disappear, to vanish, not exist, is the space between gasping for air and drowning, the state of being and not-being, weight and weightless, sinking and floating, gravity and no-gravity. Everything, if you don't have substance, if you are totally alone, means to drown.
7.
People tell her she's a pretty girl, and pretty girls are meant to be pretty. A pretty girl doesn't need to be known. But she is. She always is.
And Sally—for being a pretty girl— she wants to be known.
8.
Ocean Vuong's: "Listen, the year is gone. I know nothing of my country. I write things down. I build a life & tear it apart & the sun keeps shining."
9.
Sally sees Poseidon two weeks later, when she's at the beach, sitting and listening to the waves, trying to get some writing done. Her notebook is open and her pencil is resting on it as she thinks of how to write something she thought of coherently.
His eyes light up when he sees her and she offers him a quick wave, because she's busy and doesn't want her mind to lose track.
"Hey, it's you. Good to see you again, Sally."
She gives him a half-smile. "Back at you, Poseidon."
The woman beside Poseidon raises an eyebrow at him, which he sheepishly smiles. "This is my sister."
He leaves to somewhere, Hestia remaining behind.
She smiles, fond exasperation. "I'm sorry for my brother. He forgets his manners."
Sally giggles. "It's okay. I didn't mind."
Their eyes meet. Molten against earth. Sally wilts.
"What are you writing?" Her face is non-judgemental, welcoming. Curious.
"Something fantasy-related," Sally answers, "The words aren't forming yet."
The woman smiles. Gentle. Tender. Warm, warm, warm. "Don't worry. You'll get there." She pauses. "Oh, I haven't introduced myself yet and here I was talking about Poseidon's manners."
And this feels a lot like revelation. Something you're waiting for with bated breath. Sally doesn't know why she's holding her breath but this moment, this moment encompasses all.
"I'm—" a call interrupts her before she can say her name. Her features, before settling into disappointment. A frown brushes her face.
"Next time?" Sally offers.
The woman looks at her and a smile appears, again. Dusts her lips. Rose-dawned. As if looking at Sally cures all maladies. She nods. "Next time."
Next time.
10.
A muse strikes.
Sally writes. And if she writes with the lady in mind, well. That's only for her to know.
11.
The woman's eyes are golden fires and their flames lick up Sally's back and it burns yet she welcomes it all the same.
The flames curl up her spine, trail over her rib-bones, until they settle. Like a halo.
This is the antithesis.
They feel like a lover.
This will be her undoing.
12.
Audrey Hepburn's: Moon River.
13.
Next time comes sooner than later.
And Sally finally learns her name and it is a revelation. It is discovery.
"I'm Hestia." Molten eyes meet earth. "It's really nice to meet you properly, Sally."
14.
This is what Sally Jackson knows:
She is going to burn alive.
She will burn you down with her.
Embers and sparks.
Ashes to ashes.
15.
(Let her be your ruination.)
16.
Sally and Hestia become friends. They talk about everything and nothing. Poetry, books, writing, family, school, history.
Anything. Conversations range from everything to nothing.
Quiet is a solitude, but it's pleasant in the company of an other. When you can share.
Sally holds the vitriol in solace-seeking hands.
This is what it means to go beyond. This is what it means to be beyond.
17.
The inferno will swallow her.
This is her undoing.
She remains here.
18.
(Hestia is her friend but Friend seems, Sally muses, too little a word. Not even close to enough, doesn't fit on her tongue, unwell in her mind. Definition is not concrete. There's something else, something that she doesn't dare think aloud or breathe out that steals air from her lungs and leaves her chest hollow. There isn't a name for what Sally feels towards Hestia, nothing to describe it properly. But she feels magnitudes and so, her mind calls her a coward. She lets it. She knows what she is.)
(One day, she promises herself, she’ll look Hestia in her burning eyes and tell her, heart drenched in lava so she doesn't get burned. She’ll tell her: You’re the one I was looking for before I even knew. You're the one I was searching for. Loneliness is a cavity but you made that cavity dissolve. You’re the one my soul recognized when we first met. You’re the one I know will understand me because I would understand you too. You're the one.)
(But not tonight. Not soon.)
19.
When Sally Jackson graduates, the people cheering for her are Hestia, the woman from the grocery store, her coworkers and friends from the cafe and the family she helps take care of.
20.
(Sally doesn't know it but she's the one that holds the lighter. She's the one who watches Hestia kindle and burn.
She isn't born of flames, not like Hestia, but the fire welcomes her in and rests dozedly upon her. It makes a home in her.
Sally is of earth, and flames scorch earth but Sally is clay.
Hestia traces up and down her veins, places her fingers on her pulse and listens. Feels. Like she's the devout worshipper and Sally's the goddess.
Which is so close to truth, because Hestia's the goddess but Sally's ever more divine.)
21.
Ocean Vuong's; On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous: "Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me?"
22.
At a turning point, does Hestia realize that Sally's hands are composed of bones, and muscles, and cells, and flesh: this thought that reveals itself to her terrifies her beyond her wits— it terrifies her down to the matrix of her bone. A branding— hot metal searing through skin.
This is not something she can avoid.
Hestia can't imagine her dying. She doesn't want to. She can't.
23.
(When she cries, let her. Cradle her close. Let her wilt. Let her be weak. Let her shatter and cave in. Do not let her keep her more overwhelming emotions away. Do not let her be something so strong that it doesn't break. When she does break, it will be easier to carry. You can turn her into something so strong. You can mend her, crevice by crevice, bit by bit. Just a little.
Let her cry. Let her sob. Let her wither into calamity in your embrace. Let her be more human than she is goddess when she is with you. Do not make her a martyr. Your flames love her. She is a woman, young and strong and so so divine. Almost like you.)
24.
In the antrum of Sally's chest, her heart hums. She has submerged herself in gasoline, and it holds the ighter, the matchbox, the fire and the flames.
25.
Hestia’s fingers fluttering over Sally’s rib-bones, her touch silk. Sally welcoming her reverence, drowning in her tenderness.
26.
If Hestia wasn't there after the beginning of the world, after the age of Titans, after their victory, she would've believed Sally made the world.
(Heretic. Sacrilege. Her siblings would whisper if they heard Hestia's thoughts. She's the goddess, not Sally. But that's false.
Sally's the most divine of them all.)
She didn’t venture here to believe in neurons, and tissues, and cells, in the thrum of blood and heartbeats. Not until she was approached by nature's elements picked from her being. (How do mortals breathe? How does she breathe? What are the steps to inhaling and exhaling? What is the foundation of oxygen?) (If Hestia didn't know better, if she wasn't there at the age of the Titans, before she learned the tales of the beginning of creation, she would've thought that Sally existed before everything: before the first star, the first nebula, the first planet, the first galaxy, the first blackhole, the first universe— how could anything have lived before her and how could anything live after her?)
And Hestia's terrible at refusing her anything and everything, even if she could and wanted to, Sally is Sally and she’s the one who holds the matches and the vitriol. If she wants to incinerate her, she will: Hestia's body in the middle of an inferno, circling and rising and licking at her feet. Forget that she's a goddess. Her flames adore her. Forget that Hestia's the powerful one here; the one divine.
Remember she'd glady let Sally.
(Sally displays to you her ancient pillars; she is the temple, the shrine— she is made of every offering, she is built from every incendiary material known to man and upon the altar lies a bottle filled to the brim with something that brushes past your nose: like molten, like love, like death. She displays to you her archaic anatomy; she is the temple, the sanctuary, the tombstone, the saint herself— and she forgives your sins and holds you.)
27.
The quote: I'll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you?
We've read the back of the book. We know what's going to happen.
28.
"Sally?"
The person in question hums.
Their eyes meet: molten against earth.
Hestia swallows her heart, and swallows her nerves. "I'll only ask this once, and then never again. Do you want to go on a date with me?"
Sally keeps looking at her, eyes burning into hers. She smiles, warmth festering and curling around her mouth's ends. "Of course. I thought you'd never ask."
Hestia grins, unfettered honeysuckle.
29.
Hestia takes her to a diner. There's a jukebox in the corner, and Sally puts some money in it for it to play. Hestia frowns at that but Sally smiles at her, curling her fingers over hers.
They dance.
When the night ends, Hestia walks Sally to her cabin.
Sally Jackson's hands drench themselves in the after-wick of flames. Blaze travelling up and spreading from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade, from bone to bone, spreading to ribcage. Ignites.
To love means to swim in magma, eroding and brutal as it is. It means to drink lava and consider it sweet.
Nectar is Sally's lips and so, Hestia drinks.
30.
(Orpheus: How will you remember?
Eurydice: That I love you?
Orpheus: Yes.
Eurydice: That's easy. I can't help it.)
31.
"Sally?" Hestia calls out, hand reaching for hers blindly.
Sally's hand finds hers. "Yeah?"
"I want to tell you something," she turns to face her, "you're going to think I'm lying but I'm not. Everything I'm going to tell you will be the truth."
Sally listens, hair splayed as Hestia plays with it, almost nervously. Cards a hand through it.
"I believe you. So, I'm not mad like I thought I was, for seeing those figures and monsters."
Hestia shakes her head, curls her fingers over Sally's. "You aren't."
A smile plays on Sally's lips. "Hestia. I knew." At her surprised face, she laughs gently, going on to say, "you're not too slick. You alwyas gave me the feeling of being otherworldly."
Hestia groans. "And here I thought I was concealing it."
Sally giggles, removing her hand from her eyes and kissing her knuckles. "You were. I'm just. Too perceptive, for my own good."
Hestia curls her fingers around Sally's neck, feels her pulse, and tugs her gently into a kiss.
When they break away from it, Sally says, "I thought you were a maiden goddess."
Hestia meets her eyes, rose creeping up on her cheeks. Dusk painting her skin. "I am. I was."
32.
Ocean Vuong's; On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous, again: "Who will be lost in the story we tell ourselves? Who will be lost in ourselves? A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing."
33.
She allows you to sink into the mineral anatomy of her very bones: her calcium, her potassium; her archaic pillars shift and complain beneath your weight, like an old house in a summer's thunderstorm. You try not to leave marks on her venerated flesh— her hands, her hips, her cheekbones, her lips— in ash because Chaos above forbid you kindle an unloveable unintentional inferno, enacting arson upon the revered temple of her holy figure.
34.
Listen.
When she burns, do not cry. Instead, take up the kindess she leaves behind and wield it like a much sharper blade than the one you have. Bare your teeth in a grin. Be the beginning, be the riot. Tell her name to anyone wanting to listen, and yell her name to everyone else outloud. Do not pause, do not break, do not hesitate. Not for a single moment. Do not mourn and do not cry, she wouldn't want you to. The more you do, the more her corpse festers and rots.
Let her be forever. Remember her for all the years, decades, centuries, milleniums to come. Immortal. Remembered and revered. She will be forever.
They will take her smile, they will take her kisses, they will take the burn of her earth eyes, they will take the reverence when she touches you, they will take her your heart. They will take your home.
If they know, they will do everything to keep you to apart.
So. No.
Let her be forever. She will be forever.
They will not take her memory. And as long as your flames are alive, you won't let them take her memory.
35.
"Hestia?"
She crosses the cabin to where Sally is, placing her head on her chest when she sees her.
Sally holds her. She always teases Hestia about how she's taller, even though she knows Hestia chose to look the way she is— this form.
"I want a baby. Do you want a baby?" She softly says.
Hestia stills. Thinks of mortal families she tends to from the hearth and oversees homes. Thinks of their kids and how she's always wanted her own.
"I do. I want a baby."
Sally cups her cheek, eyes gazing into hers in a silent question.
Hestia nods, presses a kiss on her lips. "It'll be dangerous. Monsters will come after them. It'll be a risk." She falls silent, then, "My brother will throw me into Chaos for it if he finds out if he doesn't kill you first. If he let Hera hang above the void for trying to overthrow him, he'll do something worse to me. I swore an oath."
"You didn't swear on the Styx." She rests her forehead against Hestia's crown. "You never swore in this millenia. We've got Poseidon backing us up, if it comes to that. And we have you too. You're the most important goddess, meri pyaar."
Hestia thinks of getting married under Nyx, hidden from Hera's eyes. She thinks of Sally lifting her veil, and Hestia lifting hers, and a soft press of lips. She thinks of their child, in the future and what she would do to keep them and Sally safe.
If Zeus really does kill them, then she'd construct temples upon temples, and statues upon statues to keep her alive in memory, if she can’t anything else. Could fucking fill herself with the burn of incence as she keeps Sally and her child alive with bleeding grips. With bare hands and bared teeth, she would fight tooth and nail to preserve the smile Sally gave her and the gummy-toothed smile that her child will give her. She would tear the world apart from one end to the other.
Hestia's a peaceful goddess but that can change. She can change. Especially if it comes to the expense of her family.
Hestia bares her throat, tips her head back and rests her eyes on the ceiling. She can feel Sally's grin.
"We're having a baby."
36.
Perseus Jackson is born on August 18, 1993.
And this is Hestia's home.
Her kid is going to live. She and Sally will make sure of it, gods be damned.
Their boy will have a happy ending, like the reason why they named him that name.
Hestia brushes a finger along his cheek. He has Sally's earth eyes, and Hestia's nose. She knows he'll have Sally's cheekbones when he grows older.
"Hi Perseus," she says, warm. "I'm your mama."
He giggles, and oh. This is family, this is home, this is hearth.
"And that's your other mama who'd holding you, right now." She tucks a lock of hair behind Sally's ear, exhausted and glassy-eyed yet still smiling.
"You're going to get a happy ending. You're going to be happy. You'll live. We'll make sure of that." Sally kisses his nose, Hestia's head resting on her shoulder as she trails a finger over his face.
We swear.
This is Hestia's home.