FIC: i will burn this whole city down
Fandom: Greek Mythology
Genre: AU
Characters: Cassandra, Priam, Paris, Helen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Implied character death, gang culture
Summary: This is the secret that she shouldn't know: the House of Priam is built on rivers of blood.
In which the Iliad is a story of gangland warfare. Written for the Americana meme here.
mr hades is a mean old man
must be making some mighty big deals
seems like he owns everything
kinda makes you wonder how it feels
- way down hadestown, anais mitchell
This is the secret that she shouldn’t know: the House of Priam is built on rivers of blood.
Her father doesn’t carry the guns himself; he has boys to do that for him, and some of them are boys, nothing but blood and salt behind their teeth and a need to watch America in flames. Priam’s more calculated than that; he wants it to sell, not to burn, but if the fires need to rage, they need to rage.
Cassandra knows that you can’t fight fire with fire.
Paris is the golden boy of the dark forces, and his swagger is partly the cash tucked under his fedora, partly his father’s pin in his lapel, partly the illicit moonshine in his hipflask and mostly, above all, sheer unadulterated horseshit. Cassandra watches him mouth at the neck of a broad in a speakeasy that she shouldn’t know exists every night in her dreams, and knows it will bring ruin.
It’s when he brings home Helen that she feels like burning herself.
Her brother brags about having swiped the district attorney’s daughter, and maybe he has, but Cassandra sees something else behind that scarlet smile and simpering eyes. Cassandra sees a mad prairie dog that only knows how to snap at hands that feed it, and should have been put down years ago.
And Menelaus is a bloodhound when he's roused.
“Please, Pop, listen to me,” she begs, throwing herself on her father’s mercy, “that bitch will tear us down one by one until there’s nothing left!” He doesn’t listen. He never does. He calls her little songbird, and presses a kiss to her curls, and smells of smoke and bourbon and betrayal soon to come.
In her desperation, she tells him that she knows everything; every dirty little secret, every crook, every hit. And she cannot, for her life, tell him how.
Her father loves her. She tells herself that, as his eyes fill with tears, as he looks away to give the order. They tie her up - gently, mind - and bundle her in the trunk. She knows where they’re going, out to the desert, and the metal of their guns sing in her mind. She doesn’t blame him, the stupid old man who can’t see his empire crumbling. She doesn't even blame the gang. No, Cassandra blames the wolf.
Oh, if you play with fire, you're gonna get your fingers burned.