First of all, I do not want to hear a thing about this story not following the original mythology. It was not meant to. Secondly, I pretty much disregard anything having to do with the television series, as I cannot stomach my way through a single episode. With that, read on.
Disclaimer: (This disclaimer will only be given once; I expect it to apply for all chapters.) I do not own the animated feature film Hercules or any of its characters.
Chapter I
The Days of Youth Cut Short
"Mother! Mom!" The tiny figure of a five year old boy went racing across the fields of Crete toward a woman reclining in the shade of an ancient, gnarled olive tree.
The woman in question was unsurpassed in beauty. Her rich, mahogany hair flowed over her shoulders in the light breeze, and her dark lashes fluttered in a resting position on the creamy skin of her cheeks. As the boy approached, the lashes parted to reveal honey-colored irises that made any who saw them reminisce of sunlight and nostalgia. In future years; to any who remembered her, even if the years and ravages of time wore away at the edges of her face and her smile, those eyes would be remembered always as they once were.
"Look what I found!" the boy chattered excitedly. The child was tall for his age and had the white skin and yellow eyes of his mother; however, not a single hair grew from his head. He opened clenched palms to reveal a beautiful, if slightly worse for the wear, dragonfly. The diaphanous wings shimmered and the boy gazed at them in wonder.
That is, until the insect decided to show exactly what it thought of being carried about by rambunctious children and reached over to bite his thumb. The bug was promptly dropped with a yelp from the offended party, and flitted off to safer, childless areas of the landscape.
"Oh, it's alright," Rhea soothed when she saw her son's lower lip wobble just the slightest. Her eldest, Hades, even at this age refused to cry. As his mother, she didn't need to see tears to tell how he felt. "Let's see if we can get this fixed up…"
With little in the sense of self-consciousness, Rhea ripped a small bit of cloth from the hem of her sleeve and tied it around the area that was now sprouting small beads of blood. True to all kids, as soon as the bandage was on, Hades immediately cheered up and forgot all about being bitten.
"Why don't you play with your brother, hmm?" she asked, drawing attention to the small bundle in her lap.
Glancing at the azure infant cradled there, Hades scrunched his face up. "Po's too young to do anything fun. He can't even walk by himself yet!"
"He will, you just need to give him a chance. After all, you're his big brother. It's your job to look out for him." With this, she unwrapped the blanket and helped the grinning blue-eyed baby into a standing position. Poseidon immediately latched onto one of Hades' fingers with a death grip, and he was stuck with him whether he liked it or not. They both walked over to the sunny spot Hades was playing at earlier, and quickly the two were giggling and playing, despite protests.
This lasted for nearly an hour with only one interruption in the form of a stern reprimand for Hades when he was discovered trying to convince the baby to pet a bumblebee; a practice he was proud to have mastered and exercised at every opportunity.
When the wind stopped blowing and the field became quiet, making Rhea wonder how that could be possible, since it had seemed silent already, the boys did not notice and continued to play. However, when a huge shadow fell over them and blotted out the sun, they noticed. Their mother appeared in front of them, facing the source of darkness.
The looming figure looked down on them from a great height. "So this is where you went, my wife." The voice boomed, though it did not yet seem mal-intentioned.
"Kr- Kronos." Rhea was clearly unsettled by his appearance. Titans and gods had the ability to change their shape and size; normally he would possess the same humanlike stature of his wife, and it bothered her to see him this way. Their marriage had become strained in recent days; Kronos had slowly declined in temperament and often seemed lost in thought. She was afraid he would become a bad influence on the children, so she chose to have a small break and bring them down to this place that was so much brighter than their home had become. Now she wished perhaps she'd paid a little more attention to his withdrawn demeanor, instead of trying to ignore it.
He gently rested his enormous hand on Rhea's shoulder. "Trying to hide them from me?"
She only looked up at him in confusion and growing dread. That dread changed to full-fledged fear when Kronos' eyes hardened and glinted with madness. The grip on her shoulder tightened painfully and he threw her to the side where she hit her head on the trunk of the olive tree. Dazed, she blearily watched as the figure of her husband advanced on Hades and Poseidon.
As soon as Hades saw his mother's pain, a notorious rage boiled up within him. That anger quickly simmered and died once those deranged orbs turned his way. He gathered his brother up in his arms. Po seemed to sense something was very wrong, but despite his tearing eyes, remained silent. Hades looked up at the dark, imposing figure of his father and trembled.
"You will never take my kingdom from me…" Kronos hissed.
Rhea fully returned to consciousness just in time to scream in horror as she watched her husband devour the two children. Disbelieving; her hand stretched out as if she could stop what had already occurred, the titaness shrieked in agony.
Hades, still clutching tightly to his baby brother, heard his mother's cries; then the darkness consumed him.
