"No magic," she makes him promise. "No interfering of any kind. Just tell me how she's doing."
Hades knows how long she's waited to ask him to look in on her daughter. It's been a silent plea behind her eyes for weeks even though he knows she's reluctant to burden him—but she needn't worry about that. He knows how important it is to her. So, of course, he readily agrees when she brings it up and further promises to heed her wish not to use magic. He couldn't deny her anything.
…But she never specified that he couldn't use magic on himself.
He appears in Storybrooke in a column of blue flame near the house of the resident Savior and her family, striding quickly into the center of town and attempting to remain unseen. It's been a couple of months since the heroes' return but he's still not eager to have a run-in. Catching his reflection in a storefront window, he glances around and his eyes land on a Storybrooke citizen—a moment later and he's smirking back at himself through the face of one of the dwarves (Leo? Lenny?) and continuing to the diner. It's always uncomfortable being in another body but he shakes it off. This is for Zelena.
The overly-cheerful bell announces his arrival and a few people smile in his direction but other than that, he's not noticed. He takes a seat in a booth and the elderly owner places a cup of coffee in front of him. Must be his usual, he decides. It's too bitter for his taste and he grimaces as he takes a sip.
"Leroy!" someone says as they walk through the door, and Hades is suddenly confronted with the former Evil Queen herself, her arms full of a whimpering infant.
"I'm so glad you're here," Regina is saying in a relieved tone. "Helena's been crying all morning and I haven't been able to do anything. Could you take her while I use the restroom?"
Before he has time to even open his mouth, Regina plops the baby in his arms saying, "Thank you!" and races to the back of the diner.
Hades is frozen, eyes staring at the fussing child. He's never held an infant before; he doesn't know what to do to get her to stop crying. He glances around once before taking a chance and bouncing the babe lightly. And almost instantly, the girl's cries start to taper off. She's looking at him now with wide, curious eyes.
They're identical to Zelena's. His heart jumps into his throat (still such a strange sensation) as the clear blue orbs take in his face. Bright, questioning, intelligent—just like his Zelena. He can't look away. A tiny hand reaches up inquisitively and he lifts one of his so her little digits can clasp onto his index finger.
Oh, he loves her. He loves this girl to pieces and it's only been ten minutes. He's doomed.
"Hello," he whispers to her, and to his delight her face lights up in a little smile.
"Your mother misses you very much," he continues quietly and gently rocks her. "I know she wants to be here too…she's just a little scared right now. I think we can forgive her that, can't we?"
Helena doesn't say anything, but the grip on his finger tightens as she fights for more attention. He gladly gives it and bounces her lightly, continuing to talk softly.
Hades had never thought about being a parent before. Being a father. But something in him suddenly clicks and he knows he would do this in a heartbeat.
The clack of Regina's heels announces her arrival and he looks up. "Thanks, Leroy," she says gratefully. "She can be quite the handful sometimes…God, I haven't even been able to eat anything since last night." She pauses, looking at him in confusion. "How did you get her to stop crying?"
Hades shrugs. "Just have a way with kids, I guess," he says in the gruffest tone he can muster. Regina shakes it off and takes the baby back. Already Hades misses being able to hold her and he shoves it down before he does anything rash.
"Gotta get going," he tells her, and nods to her before exiting the diner and heading towards a deserted street to disappear.
He closes his eyes and the next sight that greets him is the Underworld. Home. Zelena is standing, pacing in their living room and she looks to him immediately when he walks in, shedding his overcoat.
"How is she?" she asks instantly, coming up to him. "Is she alright?"
He reaches for one of her hands, kissing it lightly, and brings his other up to rest on her cheek. Her eyes are filled with worry, anxiety practically radiating from them.
"She's completely safe," he says, and to his relief, she sighs and her shoulders lose a bit of their tension. "A healthy and happy little girl." He doesn't tell her how close he got to obtain that evidence.
Zelena smiles and tears start streaming down her cheeks and he pulls her to him, stroking her head and back and feeling his heart break at the sound of her cries. For once, he can honestly understand how she's feeling—because he's missing that little girl more than anything now.
~8~
Hades makes the trip so often to Storybrooke it feels almost routine. Zelena had requested he go every few weeks or so but instead he quietly goes every Friday, like clockwork—wake up, dress, leave a cup of coffee on Zelena's bedside table, do a few rounds through his domain, head to Storybrooke, be back in time for lunch. He assumes various identities of the town's passerby every time (the most interesting one being Henry, when he had quite the debacle explaining why he "skipped school") and is able to keep a watchful eye on baby Helena successfully.
One night, Hades takes a chance and appears directly into the nursery. It's well past midnight and he's confident the rest of the family has already gone to bed. As he steps closer, he sees that the one-year-old is wide awake—not disturbed in any way, but certainly not sleepy.
Hades grins at the child, peering over the railing. "Hello, little one."
Helena points and giggles at him and he freezes, his eyes locking to the door. He can't hear any sign of movement.
"You have to be a little quieter, my dear," he whispers to her, and reaches in to pick her up. "Don't want to wake your happy little heroes, now."
There's a collection of books by a rocking chair and he selects one at random, settling himself in the cushioned seat and adjusting the baby so she can see the pictures. As he starts reading her eyes are riveted to the colorful drawings, her hands reaching out to touch certain images and tapping his stomach to make sure he's paying attention to them. Hades quietly chuckles and watches little Helena let out a yawn after he makes it through the book, and he shifts her closer to his chest.
Her delicate head rests against the crook of his neck and he can feel the slow pulse of her tiny heart with every breath she makes. Excluding holding his love in his arms, Hades thinks he's never felt more at peace in all his long life.
And he suddenly realizes how dangerous this is.
He can't let this continue. He's jeopardizing any chance of Zelena seeing her daughter again by interfering like this. If someone were to catch him here…and on top of that, feeling so emotionally attached to the tiny girl…
Hades sets Helena back down in her crib, covering her with a blanket and cursing himself for being so ludicrous. He vanishes back to the Underworld and vows never to get so close again.
~8~
It lasts about five years before Hades breaks his rule. He'd kept to the sidelines, watched her crawl and stand and walk and run, speak single words and full sentences, surpass others her age in curiosity and intelligence. That is, until the night of the thunderstorm.
He hears her scream from the Underworld. He'd spelled a safeguard into existence just in case of an emergency, one only he could hear, and it's never gone off before now. Hades sits up in bed, heart racing, and Zelena shifts to look at him sleepily.
"What's wrong?" she asks groggily, lifting her head slightly as he starts to move out of the bed and put on the outfit he'd discarded the night before.
"Nothing," he reassures her. "The ferry's brought some sort of particular arrival and I need to take a look."
Zelena rolls her eyes but doesn't question it. "Well, come back quickly, love."
Hades smiles and kisses her gently. "For you, anything."
He closes his eyes and disappears as quickly as he can, and finds himself standing in a child's bedroom. It's the nursery he'd been in all those years ago, give or take a few changes: the walls are a soft blue instead of vibrant yellow, there's a desk and a bookshelf against the walls, and the twin-sized bed in the corner harbors the shaking form of a six-year-old underneath the worn patchwork quilt.
There's a massive storm going on outside the confines of the house. It's practically shaking the foundation, lightning flashing past the window, and it takes him a moment to calm his breathing before he realizes it was most likely the thunder that had caused her to scream. He snaps his fingers and the loud crashing fades until there's nothing more than a light breeze blowing past the window.
"Helena," he says gently.
A mass of red curls peeks over the edge of the blankets. Clear blue eyes pierce his. "Who are you?" she asks, sounding afraid.
He holds his hands up in a gesture of reassurance. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you."
Helena sits up in bed, her little hands clutching at her comforter. She looks out the window once and shifts back to him, staring in hesitation. "…Did you make the thunder stop?"
He nods. There's a desk chair close to the bed and he moves towards it. "May I sit?"
"…Yeah…" Her gaze never leaves his form as he takes a seat and folds his hands in his lap.
"Who are you?" she repeats. He chuckles at the persistence—so like her mother.
"I'm Hades," he says.
"Hades?" Her nose wrinkles in thought. "Like in the book Mommy gave me?" She pulls a book from her bedside table and starts flipping through it until she stops on a particular chapter and holds it up. It's obviously a beginner's mythology novel, and she's turned to a page entitled THE UNDERWORLD in bold blue letters. A rather crude depiction of himself (complete with jagged white teeth) sneers back at him and he manages to hold back a scoff.
"Yes, I suppose so," he answers. Helena looks a little impressed—well, as impressed as a six-year-old can be about having a God in her bedroom.
"How come you're here and not down there?" She's pointing to the floor as she speaks and he can't help but laugh.
"Well…I'm here to make sure nothing bad happens to you," Hades replies truthfully.
Her head tilts a bit to the side. "Why?"
He ponders how to answer that. It's not like he can just come right out and tell her that her mother is actually his wife…
…Can he?
"That's a long story," he says vaguely, hoping that she'll buy it.
She doesn't. "Why?" she asks again.
He lets out a sigh and looks at her. "How about this…I'll tell you the story, but you have to promise to keep it secret. Can you do that?"
Helena looks at him with wide, excited eyes. "It's a secret story?" she says in a hushed tone.
"Yep." He leans forward, bracing his arms on his knees. "So you can't tell anyone, okay?"
She nods vigorously. He fights back the urge to walk away. He's going to regret doing this…
Hades clears his throat anyway and begins. "Once upon a time, there was a man whose heart was broken. He never thought anyone would be able to fix it, and that he would live the rest of his days alone and unloved. Then, he came across a woman with green skin who fixed the all the damaged pieces…"
~8~
After that, Hades finds himself much more involved than he ever meant to be. And years start to pass before he realizes it.
He helps her with late-night homework, quizzes her on vocabulary and reading comprehension. Invisibly, he picks her up when she falls off her bike on the way to school. He leaves novels on her bed that he thinks she'll like, extra snacks in her lunches. When a teacher is being unfairly harsh about a test, he spells a little understanding through the thick skull and makes sure she gets a decent grade.
On one particular day during her second year of high school, he finds her history teacher pouring over lecture notes for the day with a flask in his hand. Hades frowns as he stands, invisible, in the corner of the man's office. This won't do at all, he thinks, and with a snap of his fingers the man sits up, looking queasy, and bolts from the room.
With a quick glance at the man's notes for the class and a few key changes to his current ensemble, he strides down the hall and into the classroom where twenty students sit awaiting their teacher's arrival.
As he sets a vintage briefcase on the desk and whisks a few lecture notes into being, one student asks, "Hey, where's Mr. Stevenson?"
He looks up and peers over the glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Mr. Stevenson, unfortunately, had to leave early due to a personal matter."
Hades catches a spot of bright red hair from the second row of desks and winks surreptitiously in that direction. He knows she can see right through the glamour he's put on.
"I'm Mr. Smith, your substitute," he says clearly so everyone can hear him, and he sees Helena hide a smirk behind her hand. "Today we'll be diving headfirst into Greek Mythology. Please get out your textbooks and open up to page 187."
~8~
That's one of the last times he's able to see Helena directly. Her schedule becomes crammed and two years later, she graduates from high school with her sights set on university. She's going to become a novelist. He's watched her writing blossom through the years and knows her stories are going to change the world.
Zelena asks him, after Helena graduates, if he would stop making trips to the Overworld to see her. He sees the resigned look in her eyes and suddenly feels an incredible wave of guilt wash over him—as he thinks of all the time he's gotten to spend with her daughter, it gets steadily worse.
"Of course," he says to her, and she curls into his side with a pained sigh.
"Thank you," she says quietly. "It's just…I can't have you keep doing this. It's not fair to her…"
"I know." It's not fair to either of them. Hades holds her in silence, debating whether or not to tell her just how often he'd been going in the first place. He decides to keep it quiet for the time being.
But that doesn't hinder him from sneaking away once in a while to check on Helena. He's worried, terrified that he's not there in case something goes wrong. It's from a distance that he watches her work tireless jobs, study late into the night, have her heart broken by various suitors (that particular area of her life makes his teeth grind unconsciously). She successfully gets her masters degree and he looks on with pride filling his heart as she accepts her diploma and runs offstage into the waiting arms of her latest—and, so far, longest-standing—boyfriend.
Tears prick behind his eyes and that's when he realizes—that's his little girl. The one he's looked after and seen grow up and held in his arms when she cried at night. It suddenly doesn't matter to him that he and Zelena haven't managed to broach the subject of children all these years, though part of him wishes he had.
He's been a father all along.
He returns to the Underworld after seeing Helena's boyfriend lower himself to one knee and resolves to tell Zelena everything.
It takes a while for him—almost a month, in fact—to work up the courage to reveal all his little trips to visit her daughter, and as predicted she's positively fuming with him. He doesn't blame her one bit and takes the verbal onslaught with guilt heavy in his chest.
"You had no right!" she yells at him, her jaw clenched in anger and fists balled at her sides. "She's the only thing I allow myself to be selfish over and you had no business going behind my back like that!"
Her words snap something in him and they lock eyes. He can see the hurt, the betrayal in her gaze but he looks past that: behind her unshed tears is unbidden sadness that they couldn't have gone to her daughter together. Hades reaches for her hands and does his best to make her see how much he cares—about her, about Helena, about their happiness. About how upset he's made her feel. But honestly, he tells himself, Helena's got just as big of a place in his heart. And he tries very gently to tell her just that.
"I've watched over that girl for twenty-five years." He sees the fire in her eyes dim a bit at his quiet statement. He swallows once before speaking again. "I think I deserve the right to be a little worried about her."
He can see his words have gotten through. Zelena's eyes widen just a fraction before her chin starts to tremble and he places his lips against her forehead. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Hades holds her as she sobs. It's been quite a while since she's let herself cry and he knows she needs this—to let all her grief out so she can confront this situation. After she's breathing normally again, he puts a mug of tea in her hands and gently suggests, "Why don't we go visit her?"
She's looking at him like the question has never crossed her mind (though he knows it has many times). He can tell she's thinking about her magic—after all, she's spent years harnessing it, learning to properly control it in a realm that's been unkind to her particular brand of sorcery. And she's definitely succeeded, though he's not sure she's accepted that fact yet.
So it surprises him when Zelena quietly comes up to him on the balcony the following morning, her head on his shoulder and her hand reaching for his, and gives him her answer.
"I think I want to go," she finally admits. He presses a kiss to her hair in response and they leave on the ferry that same evening.
He leads Zelena to Helena's new house in Storybrooke, the one with the emerald green door and the bicycles in the drive, and watches her hesitate before the doorbell. Frightened eyes meet his and he nods once, encouragingly. You can do this, love. I know you can.
Helena answers the door and leads her mother inside and Hades lets out a breath of relief. His biggest fear was Helena's reaction to the woman standing on her doorstep but it's lessening with every passing minute. He waits patiently on the steps, feeling the wind on his face and watching the sun make its westward descent.
The muffled sound of his name brings him back to reality and he smirks slightly. Helena's asked to see him. Rather than popping into existence in her living room he opts for knocking at the front door and walking inside, the sound of their voices leading him to the living room.
Zelena is sitting next to her daughter, her eyes significantly lighter than before and the buried guilt in his heart lessens a fraction. Helena stands and for the first time in years, he's finally able to see her properly. Her hair is vibrant and long, eyes still sparkling with wit and intelligence. Everything in her resembles the woman he loves, right down to the small smile on her face.
She sticks her hand out in greeting. Hades fights an eye roll and instead hugs the young woman to him tightly. Helena hugs back just as fiercely and he can't help the happy smile that spreads across his face. He's missed holding her more than anything else.
They talk until dusk and Zelena tells her they have to return to the Underworld—he suspects she doesn't want to trespass on her daughter's hospitality too long. Helena makes them promise they'll be back during the weekend to meet her fiancé and she waves them off with a bright grin on her face.
Their walk back to the ferry is quiet. He sees her eyes wander peacefully around the town and the surrounding trees and the stars above their heads. Eventually they land on him and Hades smiles back at her. He loves seeing the levity, the hope back in her beautiful eyes.
"When did you tell her?" he hears her ask when they're on the ferry. "When did you tell her about me?"
He knew she'd been waiting to ask that for some time now. Hades looks at her, takes her hands between his. "The night of the thunderstorm."
The happiness that shines in her eyes as she kisses him is all the response he needs.
END
Notes:
I had planned to upload this earlier, but technical issues prevented me from doing so...at least my laptop is now safe and I've got a backup! And I figured we could all use a little fluff before Sunday's heartbreak...
This idea has been with me for like a week and it wouldn't let me go until I got it out in one piece. I hope you all enjoy Dad Hades as much as I do!
Thank you for reading and, as always, reviews are very welcomed! :)