Before Death Comes Beauty
Summary: In the bitter cold, on the harsh, winter mountainside, Belle reaches the prison where he father is being held...the gates to the Underworld. There is no Beast here. Only Hades, Lord of the Dead. BatB/Hercules crossover.
AN: The idea of Belle/Hades is so not mine. In fact, I got the idea from YouTube. Yes, I mean Disney's Hades. It's a BatB/Hercules crossover, with the random insertion of the related characters.
Since I'm really not a self-motivated romance writer, this is potentially a oneshot 'what if' scenario. If I can retain my interest in the pairing, I'll turn it into something longer. I'm sort of on the fence.
Spider To The Fly
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Hades, cast out by his brother Zeus and cursed by the Fates for attempting to seize control of Olympus, resides in the Underworld with a blazing fist at his is said that his curse disallows him to roam the world of mortals for all but one day of the year. It is prophecized by the Fates that he will be transformed into stone when the planets once more align with the Earth as punishment for disobeying the order of things. It is said that-
That was as far as the old storyteller had gone before her voice gave out. Belle had gone to keep her company as she lay on her deathbed. The dear, blind woman had gasped and struggled with pale, cracked lips to tell her all of the unwritten tales of the Greek and Roman gods in her youth—books of spoken words, beautiful and horrible stories that could never be expressed properly in a binding. She had come to hear the tale she most desperately needed to hear, because her father's life depended on it. If she were to rescue him this day, then she had to be prepared for anything. Even the remote possibility that the myths were true.
Her father's horse chipped at the frozen trail beside her, whickering nervously as his bells jangled in the near deafening silence of the mountain. Belle gently pulled the lead forward, stroking the clydestale's neck soothingly, though she was scarcely able to feel her fingers beneath her gloves. The trail was destructive, and overbearing, and cruel...but it would not dissuade her. Somewhere to the north, beyond the sea of gravestones and twisted, dead forest was a gate to an ancient crypt. Inside that crypt, her father had taken refuge, and she sorely needed to rescue him, to bring him home again to their warm cottage.
Myths were myths. Unmistakeably wonderful gifts to have, but that was all they were. If there were a crypt at the end of this road, it would not be the entrance to the Underworld, for no such place existed. Gaston was as thick-headed as every other peacock she had known, but he had only been trying to frighten her. It was possible he had even been trying to protect her.
It was not the realm of the dead she needed to fear, but the storm approaching the southern mountainside. Soon it would be much too cold for anyone to survive for very long, and her father was so very ill.
Thoughts of her father urged her onward. Though though the trail was narrow and icy, filled with barbs and weeds, it was still a trail. It would have to end sometime. Even now she could spot the outline of a dark, cavernous opening through the heavy veil of snowflakes and fog. For once, she could not pause to consider why she could see both snow and fog at once while it was so unbearably cold. The weather was not her concern today. Tomorrow, perhaps, when the storm hit, but not today.
Belle was not ready for her father's horse to suddenly jerk the lead from her hand. As though stepping into a live nest of hornets, the gelding reared and shrieked, balking away from the seemingly empty clearing ahead. Belle nearly lost her hand to the flailing kick of an enormous hoof and lost her balance, collapsing into the prickly branches and snow. A flick of horse tail and the flash of hastily retreating hindquarters was all she saw before her trusted companion cantered back down the path they had so precariously carved.
Distraught but undaunted, she only lingered a moment to reflect on her abandonment. Any sane woman would have turned back by now, but then again, a sane woman would have stayed home at her husband's behest. In any case, she could not afford to retrace her steps and become lost during her search for the missing clydestale. Belle slowly got back on her feet, her ankles throbbing with pain and stinging with a sensation that felt nearer to frostbite than she wanted.
Holding her furred hood closely to her face, she pressed forward into the unknown. The stones underfoot were getting smoother, and the space in front of her was darkening. A few steps further, and the light seemed to go out completely. Belle entered a cavernous mouth, an archway or cave of some sort, unaware of the jagged tooth-like stlagmites curving down from the ceiling. Then the wind and snow stopped, fading into a howling whistle that permeated the darkness.
This was the crypt for sure. If her father had gone down this path, he certainly would have taken refuge against the wind here. Stifling a cough, she reached out in front of her and slowly went on her way. "Father?" she called. "Father, are you here? It's me, Belle!"
Her voice echoed through the crypt, sending a different kind of chill down her spine. "Well, Gaston was right about one thing," she uttered to herself, trying to feel around for possible obstructions to her path. "This is no place for man, beast or ghost. I wish I'd had time to grab the lantern from the saddle."
As she just barely finished her sentence, she felt the tip of her boot strike a rock. Too late to regain her balance, she let out a sharp cry and careened forward. Then she was rolling, bouncing, even sliding down a sloped, stone floor that felt utterly choked full of rough stones and boulders. Finally, her somewhat bruised body came to an abrupt stop on a wall with an 'oomph!'
Now that her provisions were crushed and her muscles bruised, Belle took a minute to regain her feet. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the new light, cast from what seemed to be a pair of lanterns further down the crypt. The ceiling overhead was curved and jagged, but so evenly spaced that it must have been carved. Behind her, the mounting storm was nothing at all—not even a sound. Feeling her hopes lift, she brushed gravel from her hands and hair, shifted the weight of the pack on her shoulder and approached the light.
"Is...is someone there?" an echoing voice called out meekly. Belle knew it immediately.
"Oh, father!" The pack slid off her shoulder as she sprinted ahead. Coming to a cross-section of two tunnels, where the lanterns hung from the ceiling and barely supplied the scarcest light to see by. Belle froze with fear when she realized that what she initially believed to be shadows were not—they were cages. Most were empty, some were filled with brown, aging bones that dangled from the iron trappings. But the nearest, and the newest cage of them all contained her father, gently swinging from a chain that bolted it to the ceiling.
In the near darkness, her father's eyes glinted and blinked at her under those familiar, bushy brows. "Belle? Is that...oh, no. No, please...you have to leave this place, Belle! You must go back before it's too late!"
Not understanding the meaning of his plea, she rushed over to the cage and put her hands on the bar, looking for some sort of lock or latch to open it. "How could someone do this to you? Listen, I brought medicine. I would have brought more, but the horse spooked, the poor thing, and...father, what's wrong?"
The look of terror on his face made her heart sick. Her father wrapped cold fingers around her hand, his eyes earnest and troubled. "Please, Belle. Forget about me, the...the rumours about the Underworld. I went too far in, I...I...y-you must go back this instant. Right now!"
"What, and leave all the fun behind?"
Belle would have screamed had she a weaker disposition. Instead, she whirled on the intruder with a scowl and took a backwards step. "Who are you?"
She could not see who spoke, except for his eyes. Bright, narrow eyes. Then a burst of blue flames broken the shroud of darkness in the mouth of the tunnel across from the rows of cages. Then a face surrounded by those flames, a gaunt, ghoulish gray-blue one belonging to a figure almost three heads taller than she. This figure—being—creature in black with cerulean fire eating at his head, shoulders and arms advanced slowly. "Hi, how ya doin'? How should I put this so I don't come off as...unpleasant," he spat, flashing a set of pointed teeth in an insincere grin. "You're on my turf."
Belle held onto her father's cage tightly and pressed her back against the bars. "You...are you the one who locked my father in this cage?"
The being with the blue flames licking his scalp and reflecting in his icy eyes continued to advance. "Yeah, you see, about that. I have this law about mortals just...plutzing into my realm without and invitation. It's more of a clause, really, the one that says NO TRESPASSING...IN THE UNDERWORLD!"
As he spoke, live flames, red, orange and hot erupted from his body and slammed into the tunnel walls before dissipating. They almost touched Belle's face; she cringed back, still clutching the cage behind her with her arms spread wide. A second or two later, the blue flames returned and the being seemed to compose himself.
"So you get it, then," he said, steepling his fingers together. "Good. Now leave."
"My father is not well," she told him, not knowing if she should act angry or submissive. She was so frightened at this moment, her heart did not seem to function properly to beat fast enough and give her the strength to stand. "Please, he didn't mean any harm. If you let him free, we will never return again."
"Never return to the Underworld? That's a new one. I have a better plan—you leave, he stays. In a few days, his soul belongs to me. Y'know, Hades. Lord of the Dead. Did I forget to introduce myself?"
"Have you no compassion at all?" she demanded, not allowing herself to overreact to his bizarre introduction. This was no time to be afraid. There were no Greek gods; they were the figments of mythology and nothing more.
"I'll tell you what...toots," the 'Lord of the Dead' told her, pinching two, slender fingers as he took a few steps forward. He was giving off his own light now, filling the two tunnels with moving, skeletal shadows. "We'll compromise. He goes, you stay. I mean, hey, a soul's a soul. He goes free, and you belong to me." Without warning, he vanished in a swirl of black smoke and suddenly reappeared next to the cage she was so furiously shielding from him. His hand darted through the bars and grabbed her father's chin, pinching it and turning it towards her. "Look, he's sick. He's feeble. He won't last one more day in this armpit of the catacombs. And all you gotta do, is make the deal. Tell her, pops," he went on, making her bewildered father nod his head.
"Please, no more," she shot at him. She looked at the numerous cages and the bones that sprawled inside of them. Her heart began to race faster. "Will you promise that no harm will become of him? If I agree to your terms, my father will be allowed to return home safely?"
"C'mon, babe. I'm a god. Would I lie to you?"
"Promise me you'll see him home safely."
"You're a smart one, aren't you?" 'Hades' didn't seem too pleased with that fact. "Fine, he goes home without a scratch; your soul belongs to me, and we call it even. Deal?" He held out a slender hand, using that same, plastered grin he'd been using before.
"Belle, don't-"
"Deal," Belle said timidly, and clasped hands with the 'god'. The very moment she did, she felt as though something in her heart was trying to escape. Then, a second later, she collapsed to her knees with a surprised gasp as the crushing feeling released her. Suddenly the cool air felt as though it were passing through her entire body, rather than into her chest.
"Oh, you might feel a teensy bit weak in the knees for just a little while but I've been told that's perfectly normal for the recently bound-for-all-eternity victims," Hades went on to say, sounding very nearly a mile away from where she struggled to stand up. "Better tune in to this next part, toots, because it's time to say goodbye to daddy-o."
Belle lurched to her feet, using the cave wall for support. Her eyes turned to her father's face, a blurry image of her beloved papa reaching through the bars, as though she had turned into some kind of ghost. Then Hades filled her vision, snapping his fingers. Her father vanished in a puff of dark smoke.
"No!" Her voice felt severely weakened. Belle threw herself towards the blue-skinned 'god' but didn't make it far. "Where is he? What happened to him? You made a promise!"
Hades was stepping backwards with a grimace, as though her flailing touch might poison him. "Relax, sweet-cheeks; a deal's a deal. I didn't want the guy croaking on the way back, 'cause that would be just, way embarrassing, so I sent him home. Don't believe me? Look into the pretty window."
A swirling of blue smoke appeared in the air between them, and then shimmered. Like a basin of water, the surface of the smoke showed the interior of her father's cottage, and her father himself. He was sitting on the floor, groping about in confusion. Even as she started to call out to him, the image vanished, showing her instead the very real, and very wicked face of the yellow-eyed god on the other side.
"There, you see?" he said, and turned his back on her. "I always feel like I'm forgetting something when it comes to this part. Now, what is it...oh, yeah," he added, waving his hand again. More smoke materialized around the furred ruff of her wrists and then solidified. A pair of irons clamped down over her forearms. He smiled in satisfaction. "I tell ya, I never get tired of hearing that sound."
Belle's chin trembled a little as she opened her mouth to respond, but before she had the chance, the 'god' raised that dreadful arm of his and snapped his fingers one last time.
When she could see again, she was somewhere else, standing next to the apparent Lord of the Dead. Her shocked and frightened expression grew tenfold as his slithering, bone-chilling voice next to her ear said the words she would take with her to her grave.
"Welcome to my domain, toots."