"So, Belle's under a sleeping curse, and she doesn't think you can wake her up." Hades smiled. Zeus had called him power-hungry to his face. His subjects called him a sadist behind his back. Maybe both were true. There was no greater power than to be able to bring a man to happiness or despair. "That must sting."
"What do you want?" Rumplestiltskin didn't look up from the bric-a-brac in the pawn shop, but Hades noticed a tension in his shoulders. He had the great and powerful Dark One on the ropes, and all he had needed was the right leverage. His smile grew wider.
"Just to tell you that I wouldn't make any plans with dear old dad if I were you. Especially any that might involve hurting anyone dear to me." He kept his voice low and friendly. It was enough to make Rumplestiltskin look up. "Did you think I wouldn't find out? This is my town. Nothing goes on here without me finding out. Especially not a deal." He leaned forward and put his elbows on the counter. "So let me make a deal. Soon, my heart's going to start beating again. Zelena and I are going to go back to the mortal world, and, frankly, I won't have a use for anybody's second. born child. All you have to do is sit tight, and I tear up the contract."
It wasn't natural for him, just letting people off the hook for slighting him, but it seemed stupid to focus on the past when he had a future with Zelena. His voice dropped to a whisper. "But if one hair on Zelena's head is harmed while she's down here, well, I always wondered what would happen if you threw someone under a sleeping curse into the Styx."
"It won't work." Rumplestiltskin's voice was strangely toneless for a man whose supposed love was being threatened with a fate worse than death.
"You think whatever wards you have here are going to stop me? I told you, this is my town." He waved his hand, sending a gust of wind through the shop by way of demonstration.
"Oh, I didn't mean that." Now it was Rumplestiltskin who sounded casual, and Hades felt a warning tingle at the back of his neck. It was never good when men like them sounded like they were discussing the weather. It tended to end with somebody being hit by a lightning bolt or worse. "You and Zelena. It won't work. You're going to end up with nothing, as you always have."
"Of course it will work." Anger coursed through him, all the sharper for being one of the handful of emotions he could feel. "I love her, and she loves me. Zelena and I are going to be very happy together." He shook his head, all false sympathy. "Just because things aren't working out between you and Belle doesn't mean you have to be so cynical."
"Not cynicism. Just experience. We are, as you said, very much alike. Somewhere in that dead heart of yours, you may indeed love Zelena. But you love power as well. Do you really see yourself as being content with a farmhouse and playing with her daughter? You need to rule, to control. Belle asked me to choose, once." He gestured around the pawn shop. "You know how that ended."
Hades laughed again, but it sounded a little forced to his ears. "I'm as far beyond you as a kitten is a lion. I'll get everything I want." He sauntered towards the exit, then looked back. "I suggest you do as I say before you lose everything you have."
The Underworld was always cold, but tonight seemed especially bitter, and Hades fought the urge to grab his jacket more tightly. He could be vulnerable in front Zelena, but not his subjects. Not yet. Rumplestiltskin's words rang in his ears. Just because the man had been stupid enough to lose his true love… He was right about one thing, though. Hades wouldn't be content being an ordinary man in the world above, any more than he had been content ruling this decaying facsimile. Once his heart was beating again, he would have the full power of a god. He deserved to rule in the world of the living, and he needed Zelena at his side. If she would have him.
How was he going to do that? Just how had old Rumple gone wrong? Hades had heard the story of his banishment thirdhand from Cruella. He had tried to have everything, lied to Belle, gotten sent to a horrible place called New York for his troubles, gotten her back, become the Dark One again, kept her for a little while because of another lie, then ended up here with a cursed wife. Definitely not how Hades wanted his own plans to go. He was smarter than Rumplestiltskin, but he had also been beaten once before, and he wasn't eager to find out what his brother would do to him this time. He bowed his head. Or to live a life without Zelena.
It was the lying that was the problem, he decided. He was charming and Zelena was starting to trust him, but gods and witches could live for a long time. He could pretend to be a completely changed man and contrive some way to make sure the heroes never found a way to free themselves with Zelena being none the wiser, but how long could he keep up the charade of being content with just the ordinary? A decade? More? Not long enough.
And suppose she says no and leaves you? Then where will you be?
Where I was before. She turned me down once already. If it's true love, she'll come back one way or the other. I'm going to have to—He gulped. I'm going to have to trust her. And it was, in that moment, he discovered that fear was one of the emotions that Zeus had left him.
Zelena was waiting for him outside the restaurant. Her smile stirred something in him. Memories of memories of happiness and pleasure. He took her hand and brought it to his lips, enjoying her flushed cheeks at his exaggerated gallantry. If she noticed him trembling, she didn't say anything. Soon, he would have more than echoes. He would be whole again, and he would have her.
"You're late." She swatted him on the shoulder, but there was more worry than irritation in her voice. "I was beginning to think that I had been stood up."
"Just dealing with some impertinent people." He ushered her inside. The restaurant was the kind with pristine white tablecloths, though apparently the proprietor had dispensed with the vases that would have been at the center of the table. Dead flowers must scare the customers away. He pulled out her chair, and Zelena blushed again. Hades felt a flash of something he remembered as tenderness. All her life, Zelena had bounced between those who hated her for what she was, those who used for their own purposes, or those who only served her out of fear. He was the first—the only, so far as he knew—to care for her for her own sake. No wonder she appreciated these little gestures. He would give her so much more when he could truly feel again. He'd give her everything. "I'm told the filet mignon is excellent," he managed.
"What's wrong?" Zelena peered at him. "You seem…out of sorts."
Hades bit back a curse. He'd thought he would have a few courses to figure out the right things to say, how best to sway Zelena to his way of thinking. He thought of brushing her off until he had fully composed himself, but rejected the idea. If his honesty strategy was going to work, he had to begin it immediately. "I've been thinking about what will happen if you decide that I'm worthy of you. Suppose we get your daughter back and go to Storybrooke. What then?"
Zelena blinked at him in confusion, and a pit opened in Hades stomach. "We live happily ever after? Oh I'm sure the people left in Storybrooke will make it hard at first, but once they see that you've really changed and how good we are for my daughter, they'll come around." She looked at him. "Isn't that enough?"
"It's a good start." He shifted in his seat. Now or never. "Here's the thing. I'm a god. I want to be a good father to your little girl and a good hus-whatever you want me to be—to you. But I'm a god. Wanting power is as much a part of me as my flaming hair. It's what got me here in the first place. "
"What are you saying? Are you plotting to storm Olympus again? You said I was enough to make you forget your revenge." There was the barest hint of a tremor in her voice.
"No. Let Zeus have it." He thought of the broken Olympian Crystal. For millennia upon millennia, he had thought only of repairing it, obliterating Zeus, and taking his place was the rightful ruler of the gods. Zelena had given him other dreams, and he would always love for just for that. "But I can't smile while Snow White or whoever else runs things. And without me down here, I can't guarantee that your sister won't find a way to get her name off that tombstone. Heroes are annoying that way."
"Regina?" A hundred emotions crossed her face. He didn't understand how anyone could have complicated emotions for the woman who had banished them, but if people were logical, no one would ever end up here. "I don't—I would prefer you didn't hurt her." She covered his hand with hers. "Can't you be happy with just us being a family? With just me?"
"I love you," he said with a quiet, fearful certainty. "But I love you: the woman so ambitious and fearless that she vowed to change the laws of magic to get what she wanted. What happened to her?"
"She lost," Zelena whispered. "I wanted to matter, and I got killed. I wanted revenge, and I lost my child. Now, I just want to be loved. I guess that's what I always wanted, even in Oz. The love of the people that Dorothy half that I never did." Her laugh was short and bitter. "Pathetic."
"No, no, no. You're not pathetic. Just human." He made a mental note to schedule another torture session with Cora. "But we seem to be a bit stuck." Hades took a deep breath. After the first time Zelena had left him, he had sought out a particularly annoying couple's therapist to give him ideas. All couples fought, she'd said. The trick was compromise and negotiation, finding a way to meet both your needs. He took a pen from his pocket and drew a line down the center of a napkin. "What do you want? A family?"
"Yes. And my daughter. I want to stop losing everything."
He wrote those down on one side of the napkin. "And I want power. To rule something, somewhere."
Zelena snorted. "Not much chance of Snow White letting you rule Storybrooke." She thought for a minute. "Does it have to be Storybrooke?"
"Storybrooke is where you wanted to be. It's why I created all this." And it had magic. Once he was whole, nothing short of another god could stop him.
"I told you: I just want you now." She smiled a little, wicked and daring. "Though I wouldn't exactly say no to being a queen somewhere."
"Or Sultana of Agrabah. Or even Princess of Oz. There are a thousand different realms where we can get what we want. All of it." And he would never have to worry about ending up like Rumplestiltskin. "So what do you say we finish our meal and work on a plan for you to get your daughter back?"
"And rule the world. Or a world. I think that sounds lovely." Her eyes glittered. "And delightfully wicked."