"Hayden…I'm not feeling so well," Laurena said softly towards the man who, barely a couple hours ago, had been named as her husband. She had been holding one hand on her stomach almost the entire evening, and the other was more and more frequently moving to scratch at various but specific places on her body, namely her neck.
He glanced away from the conversation he'd been having, the man of whom which it'd been with promptly starting to talk on a new topic with someone else not too far off.
"Too much ouzo?" was the first thing Hayden had to ask, with a slight smirk, as he noticed the look of nausea plastered on her expressions. Yet he immediately noticed that both her ouzo and wine were entirely full.
He'd already opened his mouth to say something noticeably more serious, but was interrupted as she shot up out of her seat, and albeit somewhat awkwardly in her long, moon-white gown and heels, bolted out of the ballroom, and into the bathroom.
Politely excusing himself after putting a serviette to his lips, Hayden followed his wife, concerned. Pressing himself into the doorway softly, his assumption had been right, and it seemed she'd only just barely made it in there on time, as it now sounded as if her diet ever since the day she'd been born was pressing it's way up through her throat.
He knew it couldn't have been the food, because otherwise there would have been more sick guests, too. With a stroke which he couldn't identify as being horror, or anxiety, a thought stuck itself in Hayden's mind and refused to let up.
"You don't think you're… I mean, what if you're… pregnant…?" he asked. Then again, maybe the feeling that idea had caused was excitement.
The moment Laurena got a single short free opportunity, she looked up towards him from where she was kneeling at the toilet. She didn't know what to think, quite frankly, but was smiling with the same impact as the sun.
"I… I don't know… I mean, morning sickness, this? It's not exactly early in the morning…" she murmured, though was cut off as more began shooting up and out.
Hayden now kneeled at her side and reached for her hair to help hold it back.
They had abstained from any sex for several days in order to wait for the wedding, which they'd been waiting so long for here on Santorini. A dream destination of Laurena's, and for good reason, seemingly. Even so, the possibility of a child was perfectly legitimate.
But all of a sudden, Hayden was shown the truth, and it hit him with a jolt in his stomach which felt as if every member of the Greek army had just shot an arrow at him. As he'd pulled her copper, cascading hair out of her face, her neck had been exposed to his view. His heart skipped multiple beats, and all the colour drained from his face, leaving his bronzed skin looking like ice.
"No…" It came out barely above a whispering, as a whimper, something he'd never done in his life before. "NO!" This time, it was eons louder, and was like a liberation of all the rage and anger he'd once held in his heart. It'd all been suppressed, and in that single word, it had all just been released.
As Hayden had shouted it, a male guest had entered the bathroom, looking to relieve himself, but jumped as the 'no' was released. Luckily for him, the fact that it had caused him to piss himself wasn't visible because of his long tunic. What this guest instantly saw though, what Hayden had seen, caused him to turn and sprint back to where everyone else was.
Black spots, swollen lymph glands: buboes - the bubonic plague.
Hayden was already shaking, and by now, Laurena had tears welling in her eyes. She didn't even know what the Hell they'd seen yet, but his reaction alone to this caused her more concern than should have been possible.
Suddenly, a large group of men came charging into the bathroom, one of which being the one who'd just ran out. They all knew exactly what was about to happen. Laurena was sick with a disease which was swiftly wiping out all of Europe, and so they had to take her away. Isolate her somewhere. Keep her away, keep her from infecting anyone else. They needed to take her somewhere for her to die. Everyone on Earth would have reacted in this way at the time. As said, they all knew this, and this is why Hayden was so immediately distraught, not that he showed it very externally. Inside, however, he had just lost it.
"NO! You will NOT take her!" he ordered in a powerful voice, jumping to his feet to stand between his wife and the gang. His face was red with anger; towards them, towards Laurena, towards the Gods… and so he threw his hands in front of him. They were all aware that he'd been granted with the Godly power of control over fire. However, these men, who only minutes ago would have been friends, were ruthless. They had to be, to protect everyone else. So, the two strongest stepped forward first, and took the small blast of flames shot towards them in stride as they took hold of Hayden, and got him out of the way. He was fighting their grip, and was causing difficulty, but he was no match for them both.
The rest of them moved forward, and went to get the infected. She was weeping silently by this point. She had figured it out by now, and she knew what would happen next, but couldn't stop herself from shouting at them; orders for them to release her husband. Within the next minute, they would comply.
Currently though, both of the ones being suppressed were reaching out for each other as they shouted for freedom. They were lucky enough to successfully grab each others' hands, even if they both knew the contact wouldn't last long.
"S'agapo," Hayden finally said right before their hands were torn apart, and it had been in a tone that was the very opposite of the way he'd been shouting at the men.
Before anything else, the men knew Laurena could start vomiting again at any moment, and so, to solve this, they pulled out a small potato sack which was large enough to be pulled over her head, which they followed through with, and it had the strings tightened around her neck enough so that if she threw up, it wouldn't get on any of them, and thus had no chance of contaminating anything.
Hayden's shouting at this smothering matched Laurena's, and the two would have been heard throughout the whole island. They had to make that stop, didn't they? And so the last thing Hayden would ever see of his wife was her being beaten across the head hard enough to knock her out, before he then, too, blanked out from a powerful bashing. It was then that they released their hold on him, as Laurena had been demanding.
He awoke hours later, surrounded by guests who'd been present at his wedding. Not one of them was Laurena, and so, filled with an uncontrollable, livid fury, which fuelled his mutant powers to levels that were unheard of, Hayden murdered every single one of them on the spot.
He spent that entire night, and the following week stumbling through darkness, searching Santorini nonstop, over and over again for where they had taken her, but to absolutely no avail.
Eventually, exhausted to the point of madness, Hayden collapsed on one of the black-sand beaches. The scorching sun beat down on him, and at moments, the cool water reached and hugged his feet, but he felt none of it. He was the embodiment of feeling numb.
Being awake no longer felt any different than being asleep, and sometime in between those two, he'd dully worked it all out: she had to have caught it from the godforsaken rats he saw scurrying around on the ship they'd taken to get here. It would have festered during the couple days they had spent on the island before their wedding, and, had they slept together during that time, or had it not become apparent before their wedding night, Hayden, too, would have been infected. He would have been dead too. He could have been with her… but then again, he knew they'd have been separated in death, anyway. He deserved nothing better than Hell, and he was well aware of that.
All of this had caused Hayden to be brutally aware of how fragile life was, but more so the fact that he wasn't ready to die. Not yet. He couldn't face the idea of meeting up with Laurena again. He knew if he did, it would have to be in Hell, and he couldn't face the idea of her dealing with that raw torture. Then again, she'd somehow dealt with him.
As he awoke again, or at least he was quite sure he was awake, Hayden weakly began to stand, but stopped as he reached his knees in the cool, rough sand. It was as dark as midnight at the moment, but he could see faint outlines caused by the light of the vast amount of stars. There was no moon however, or more appropriately, it was a new moon. Either way, it had decided not to shine that night for the man on the beach.
In this position on his knees, half a man high, he now grew even more pathetic as he brought his filthy hands up and clasped them together with all the might that remained in him. Then, Hayden began to pray, begging to however was up there. This was the lowest he'd ever been, this pathetic heap of skin, but luckily, this was the lowest he'd ever have be, because that night, someone was there to answer him.
It was Them, and after Hayden had been at this for hours, until he was near collapsing again, they could give him what he needed. They called solely his mind away for this, and in needing to take the form of the one he most respected, they would have taken the form of Laurena, but even for them that was cold. So, they merely acted as a voice.
"You want immortality?" They knew, yet They asked. He had to be entirely certain in something like this. Something this important.
"No… I," Hayden replied. He had no idea what had happened, and considered the possibility that his sanity had been permanently lost. But he knew there was the chance that this was exactly what he'd been begging for. "I need it… I can't-"
"Enough," the booming voice interrupted, but it sounded calm. "Stand."
And so Hayden stood. Doing so was easier than it had ever been on Earth.
"Do you deserve this, Hayden?" It sounded now less calm, and more skeptical. "Say it."
He didn't know how he knew exactly what to say, but it had instantly become more obvious than the fact that the sun rose and set each day. "Yes, because I'm a God." This wasn't (just) his ego; this was the key string of words.
Then, out of nowhere, he was back on Earth, the sand digging into the bottom of his feet now instead of his knees, but Hayden had no time to consider this, because his body was instantly enveloped in an unexpected pain which raided every one of his senses. It felt as if each cell in his body was at civil war. Hayden also could have sworn that he'd be lit on fire, one that spread into every muscle and bone, one by one. This caused him to blindly run towards the ocean water, but attempting to walk into it only caused that water to feel like corrosive acid on his skin.
Hayden believed he was shouting, but was in too much pain to be sure. And then, after what felt like an eternity, it all stopped abruptly.
In his veins he could feel power, and he could feel their gift of immortality. There were no words or senses to properly describe it, but like instinct, or sensing if someone you're close to is in danger or near death, it was something he just knew was present.
Hayden couldn't fathom why he was allowed this enormous privilege, but even that wonder didn't have the potential to overcome what was still very real and very present in respect towards Laurena.
This immortality merely meant that he wouldn't have to face the pain it'd cause him to see her again. It meant that he could cause others to feel what he was now numb to; he didn't know how many people he would have to murder to satisfy this sudden bloodlust, but maybe, he considered, just until he would be able to truly feel again. If that day ever came.
The beast from his own past had been violently re-awakened, and there would never be another woman who would be capable of taming it, especially now that it was sufficiently tortured.
So with that, Hades moved toward the candle-lit houses which clung to the steep cliffs that dropped down to this beach, and he wore a sick, twisted, injured smile on his lips.