[narrative] with all their lions, with all their might and all their thirst
Ivy wasn’t going to let go of her apprentice that easily. Sure, she had been angry that the girl was insolent enough to run off with silly notions in her head about freedom, but she had come back, hadn’t she? And what a useful girl she had been when first around. Ivy could be forgiving when she was feeling generous enough and she had been at the time, casting off their fights and skirmishes at the chance of having her immortal protégé back.
It wasn’t hard to see through Persephone’s reasons for coming back -- Ivy had noticed the absence of Slade and his presence over time, and with him gone, his own apprentice would have followed. The worried questions the goddess asked over the boy, the attempts at subtlety… Her mistress was willing to give her answers, tidbits of information.
She just never said how correct those bits of information were. When not on errands for her mistress, Persephone was off searching for false leads on the whereabouts of Slade, taking her all over the world. In the small spaces between that, she was off in the Nexus, trying to care for Ryan and the upkeep at what was once normalcy in her life.
There was a downside to this, one that the goddess didn’t know about -- tracking device. Ivy couldn’t full out bug her apprentice like Slade had with his; it would be far too easy for Persephone to slip off into the Nexus, then into another world and all of that power would be lost, all of the experiments would be for nothing, even with her access to the multiverse, a part of Persephone’s agreement to come back.
The things Ivy had found had mostly been innocuous. Persephone’s apartment off world, though she knew the girl had found out about that; it would be hard not to when it was so covered with her plants, but the goddess had said nothing about it. The kid Ryan, the goddess’ pet project, it seemed. It didn’t interfere with anything she wanted, so she let the girl continue on caring for the boy unbothered. It would be good leverage for later, anyway, if it came down to it.
Other things Ivy found had been far more… interesting.
An abandoned apartment within Jump City, a place the girl seemed to visit often. It wasn’t all that hard to guess why and for what reason it had been used. Notes and messages, and little Robin.
Smiling indulgently to herself, Ivy keyed in coordinates to the PINpoint clutched in her hand, disappearing off into the Nexus.