coming home
– a house is not a home. Hades/Hestia, AU, Victory of the Titans.
Inspired by: 'Coming Home' by Diddy - Dirty Money feat. Skylar Grey. 'Monochrome Marionette' by Absol Master.
For GaleSynch, who requested this way back in April.
Warning: Blatant character twisting, implied rape.
Below, below the ground where the dead moan and black flames roar and cold eyes glint silently, judging all souls who pass through the gates.
.
He had wanted to be optimistic about the outcome of the Second Titan War.
For a god of death and the underworld he supposes that is asking for too much – everyone expects him to be the epitome of doom and gloom and all things dark, after all. They like to see him in the light of the dark, the bad guy, if they will.
He understands that. He knew that this was what would follow him when he chose this path.
But now, as he stares at the world that his father rules once again he wonders if he should have never put his hidden trust in the hero, the son of his ocean-ruling brother because his father is back from the supposed death and Time rules once more over this world.
This is not good.
.
And so he and his family flee to the folds of the earth, to the Underworld where the shrieks of the dead souls are filled with even more terror, where even Charon has stopped complaining and where Cerberus the mighty three-headed monster whimpers like a scared puppy because they know, they know.
.
For days there is nothing.
He forbids Demeter and Persephone from leaving the Underworld – they do not complain about his orders, for once in an eon or so.
Nico is another story. He is forced to seal the boy's powers after the upstart continued to try and reach the surface again in order to help his friends. They are beyond help, he told him repeatedly, but his son just swiped angrily at tears running down his face.
There is nothing and all he notices are the steady stream of demigod souls who speak of anger and examples and punishment and each child of a god is a prickle at his consciousness –
But he hides that behind an iron will of control.
For days there is nothing and Hades knows all too well that this is a scare tactic to make his family terrified of the unsteady future, paranoid about all the gray possibilities.
He tells himself that he must not fall for it and fingers his Helm of Darkness for some strength he deceives himself into feeling.
For days they wait in tensed preparation, a dead army of frustrated demigod souls that do not want rebirth at this particular moment in time brandishing their weapons and a few gods who has lost much of their powers waiting, waiting and biding their time because to strike now is foolish.
It is only when Persephone, his immortal queen and his love and his heart fall to the ground, pale and looking like death has caught up to her that he realizes just how clever his father is. How clever and cruel and manipulative he is, how he always has been.
No waves of armies composed of traitors and Titans come through the boundaries as he abandons his post to be at Persephone's side. His spring is pale and looks sick as only fading gods can – he would know, yes, he would – and he grabs her hand and kisses her roughly because he feels that this will be like losing a mortal wife, only much, much more painful and hard to bear.
"I love you," she gurgles and golden ichor dribbles out from the corner of her bluish lips. Her fingers are cold to his touch for the first time since he took her to make her his queen.
"And I you," he kisses her on the forehead because he cannot make himself spin false tales of healing and regeneration – he feels the death of an immortal around and he cannot lie to her, not now.
Demeter sobs and clutches at her precious daughter as she gives a rattling breath and fades away, leaving a golden crown he gave her once, far far back during happier times when the supposedly-dead tyrants did not stir in their inescapable prisons and the mortals believed.
It's a hunk of heavy shaped metal now, a memento of someone special.
Hades slips it into his robes where the tortured souls around the golden bauble quietens just a bit before he returns to his post, staff in one hand and sword in the other.
He has never more felt like death and he'd like to show his enemies just how much he feels like the end.
.
Up above, far above where a hero born of ocean waves and gentle smiles fails and falls from the embrace of heaven while a tainted warrior of gold is cast aside like a cocoon as a twisted butterfly rises out in a deadly metamorphosis.
"All hail the king," the butterfly that shines so golden and bright says in a terrible voice.
Within the flames the goddess of home trembles as the sacred sanctuary of home that goes farther than just the realms of the gods is violated.
Above, above, in the heavens that all those residing on the ground pray to, the houses of the gods lie in ruins and its previous owners are in shackles and defeat.
.
Perhaps her father has a soft spot for her. She was, after all, his firstborn child, the first baby of his that he swallowed, the child that had been within his stomach for the longest and that may be twisted sentimentality that makes him keep her at his side, chained and tending a small, almost cruel mockery of a hearth as all the gods, once proud and mighty, are dragged out by chains like slaves and tortured for the petty vengeance her father seeks for his own fall from mightiness.
She sheds so many tears for her brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and the rest of her imprisoned family that by the end of the seemingly endless days when her father declares his retirement for a moment or so she touches her face and finds the traces of dried-up salt.
Zeus – once-bright, once-golden, once-mighty warrior and king who was proud and ruled all of the gods in many a prosperous year – looks at her with tired blue eyes and she feels so helpless because now she sees that she is the older sister who is supposed to protect them, to show them the safety of the sacred home and she is failing her duties.
Home is nothing but a dream now and she wonders if that is what her father intends.
When night falls and quietness is restored in the once-mighty and beautiful Olympus she cries, this time for herself and for all the mortals and the brave heroes and even the fallen, lost heroes that had been fooled by her father and his brothers into joining a cause that would enslave them.
Below
.
The Titans laugh and they do not show mercy. Mortals quake as the unexplainable happens around them and terror ravages their unsuspecting minds, rampant around the world.
The king of the dead holds his ground but he is tiring. His wife has died an immortal's death and he cannot make himself recognize the world below as his home – the place that has been his home for centuries is hostile and he is sick of it all. It is but a house now, with inhabitants that feel like foreigners.
.
Demeter is weak now. She lies in a bed of jewels and stares longingly at the red fruit of temptation that bound her precious daughter to the land of the dead. "How harvest must suffer," she groans and lays a pale arm across her abdomen in pain.
Many a time he would have called her a dramatic, over-reacting woman in the past without hesitation but he feels her weakness, her powers draining away. She's lost much of her will to keep going after seeing far too many of her children lose the life that she once so proudly gave.
The enemy, it seems, considers the children of the harvest useless for sport or use.
The goddess that is his sister moans and buries her face in her hands. "What is to happen?" she whispers in a frail, broken voice and Hades knows that his father has won, at least in this small battle.
His father will not win until he, Hades, has been captured and chained like the rest of his siblings.
But what will happen?
The hearth with the black and green flames flickers slightly. Is this home? Where is home? The world is crumbling around them and after the death of his immortal queen he does not know if he can think of this cold stone palace as his home, not without the thought of her presence brightening it up at least once a year.
"We will resist," he replies at last after some deep search within his essence for an insightful response that will not cause her to lose heart.
He does not add the unsaid 'for it is the only thing we can do'. Hope must be preserved.
But what is hope?
He does not answer and returns to his post.
Above
.
"Four," the butterfly rasps after counting its prisoners and horrified, Hestia knows that the terribly beautiful insect's wings have dried. The butterfly, the old king now returned is ready to fly and truly enslave everything and everyone. "Four. Had I not sired six children by my wife?"
She trembles and shrinks and knows that her time as a little pet is up.
Where is home this is not home a house is not a home where oh where is home?
Below
.
"Father," he nods and casually twirls his staff and sword as if he fears nothing within this world. Fear will feed the lord of time and Hades will not go down giving his sire satisfaction. He will seek an honourable end, the kind that gives mortals a place in the paradise that awaits the kind-hearted and the good.
Unlike those mortals, he will never have the escape, the sweet kiss of death to liberate him from his torture and imprisonment. Unlike those mortals, his enslavement will be eternal.
He will not break and give them satisfaction.
"Son."
His army is a force that can never be depleted of soldiers and this is – was – his home for many millennia. Nonetheless he falls.
Demeter barely resists as she is dragged out, bound in bronze chains. Hades does not blink, does not avert his eyes or try to hide himself. He keeps his head up and his dignity as high as a captive can.
His father smiles mockingly down upon him. "And to think they used to call death an unstoppable force of nature," he muses aloud.
"They used to say the same for time," Hades replies and is hit for both his logic and his memory of things past.
His father's generals take Persephone's crown and laugh at his struggles to retrieve it before they crush and destroy it.
Gold dust wraps around him once, riding on a kind warm breeze, before it is blown away and the last trace of his queen, the last trace of the warm and beautiful spring is gone.
Limbo
.
What is civilization? Not this, Hestia thinks as she lies in her manacles. Anything but this.
She is still chained next to her father's throne, a little pet of a sort, but when her torture's time comes – and time always comes, her father makes sure of that – she is given to the generals who are creative in their ways, who enjoy her suffering and humiliation and know just how to get them.
They make up for all the torture she missed and it is the other gods who pity her now.
In golden blood that is always leaking from a wound on her body now she draws a line down the side of her father's throne, built of stone ripped from the glorious palace walls of Olympus and of metal from statues shredded with an unforgiving scythe. One for every day.
There are many, many lines that record her imprisoned days.
.
What is hope? Hope does not exist, Hades thinks, now daring to answer the question he once thought back when he was still his own master, still the master of death and had an army to fight his father with. He is held within a beautiful garden with soft, wondrous flowers and trees, the air is perfumed with spices and scents and the pond is like a mirror, so clear and pure.
It is torture for him. He is held with golden chains, thin and luxurious like bracelets only these are stronger than they look and they sap his powers until all he can do is lie there like a drunkard, clawing helplessly at his wrists and his nose in vain efforts of clearing the deceptive manacles and perfume.
.
Mother visits. She is a queen, a decorated doll, a turncoat who returned to her husband's side willingly and Hades wants nothing to do with her.
What, though, happened to the others?
.
Mother comes to her and weeps at her sad state, at her children who rebelled and at the fact that her son – her eldest son – will not even acknowledge her presence. Hestia takes it silently, comfortingly, but she does not forget that this woman wears her light perfumed clothes and conveniently forgets about her other children, the one in worse states than her.
.
Hope comes to him during his torture in the form of his mother. She speaks to him of gratefulness, of his father's mercy and just when he feels that he will lose his control and scream at her a small crystal blade is palmed into his hands.
He folds it into his robes and instead stiffly asks her to leave.
She does so, in all appearances heartbroken and grieving as a mother who failed to make amends with her 'traitor' son.
Above
.
The rooms thunder with the voice of her father, and he is angry, so angry his wrath is terrifying.
But the reason for his rage is news she embraces and clings to. He is angry because Hades escaped.
Hestia feels hope flicker within her even as her father takes her to be tortured by him personally. She knows nothing but this isn't about finding information, it's about the butterfly finding and gaining control over everything.
The hope is something her father wants to crush.
.
The beautiful butterfly hurts the moth, the moth who was gray and demure and never hurt anyone, the moth who just loved the fire so much.
The moth is hurt so much that the moth wishes she could die –
But she cannot.
And suddenly, the moth is not the moth but broken Hestia.
Below
.
The Underworld rejoices in its own way, the dead moaning and the monsters howling and the caverns shaking dangerously.
Hades bites into a pomegranate and feels the bittersweet juice run down his chin. He does not care.
Death is unstoppable and when time is gone death will take its place.
Earth
.
The mortals do not understand this. What is this? Is there even a word for this all?
There are screams. The earth, the ocean and even the skies rip apart – or so it seems, and there is no other fitting description for it all – and somehow, everyone swears they hear an enraged scream before everything stops.
Above
.
This time it is Hades who destroys their father. Hades, who rips the scythe from father's hands and cuts him to pieces, to bits, to portions so miniscule they are atomic before he scatters them to the deepest pits of Tartarus.
.
The first god to be rescued is Hestia, the little moth whose wings were ripped off by a cruel butterfly.
The butterfly is dead now, killed by another moth who was big and strong and liked the night far too much to allow for the poisonous sun brought by the butterfly to bring false daylight.
Hestia, little Hestia who is supposed to be the oldest, cries in his arms and it seems time slows down when she lets loose all her sorrows.
.
All the freed gods come to an agreement – it is Hades who should be king. Hades, who was the firstborn son of Kronos, the one who saved the day and the world –
Hades, who is still heartbroken and sad and confused.
Hades, who temporarily leaves the conference for a while to clear his thoughts.
Hestia joins him.
.
"My wife is dead," he says hoarsely and tosses a pebble into a pond in a ruined garden, breaking the smooth, mirror-like surface.
"I know," she replies even if she didn't until now. No one has a home and she does not want anyone to not have a shoulder to cry on.
"What kind of ruler would I be if I couldn't even protect my own queen?" he asks after the ripples shredding the surface of the pond finally come to a stop. That is what will happen, she thinks. The effects of this devastation will eventually smooth over and be forgotten in the waves of time.
And they will witness the amnesia of time take place because they are gods and they will live through it all.
Hestia shrugs. "I don't know," she murmurs. "I have never thought myself as a ruler."
And that reminds Hades that Hestia was the firstborn child of Kronos, not he.
From the depth of his sorrowful and dark mind he comes up with an idea like new light.
In the light of a new dawn the new King and Queen of the Heavens look down from above and begin to rebuild in hopes of one day restoring their home, a home and not a palace, not a house, a home where they may rest their hearts.