Hellhound Hijinks
A/N: Hello my dear readers! First off I am so-so-so sorry about the long hiatus. I want to thank the people who have shown their love since I left and it was a pleasant surprise to see some old faces too.
Thank you Shahrezad1 as always!
Thank you also to Andalite for such a lovely review!
To give you a small update things in my life have steadily become more chaotic with each passing week and so much has happened since we last met. Since then, I have started doing research, I got accepted into Grad School, got a new puppy, and I'm still trying to finish senior year; it's been insane.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write that much so I hope to get back into my mojo and I'm really going to add more to this fic and try to finish LYG. I have an idea for a one-shot- yes it's actually a one-shot this time- centering on Meg in the LYG universe.
Hope you enjoy!
"A terrible and pitiless dog guards them in front, and he has an evil craft. He fawns and wags his tail and waggles both ears at those who are coming in, but he does not allow them to come out again."
- Hesiod's Theogony
It really was just one of those days, Hades thought miserably, looking over the unfurled scrolls he held in each hand. His golden orbs cast a critical eye downward to his imps with an unfettered look of befuddlement before settling the scrolls down on his lap. Leaning back into his throne, Hades considered the news that was just broken to him, the briefest of seconds, subjecting Pain and Panic to another devastating moment of tense silence.
And then the dam burst.
"WHADDYA MEAN THEY'RE UNIONIZING?!"
Hades' fury came out in a wave of red-hot anger with all the tension he had been accumulating throughout the meeting, but now that it had been released, his cool demeanor crept back in with a welcoming zeal.
"Well, boss," Pain lightly strained in his warbled voice, trying his darnedest to take the sting out of what he was going to deliver next. "Panic and I noticed cast member morale dropping after last week's report-"
"The policy you decided to add since things aren't back to our usual standards down here and with some new faces to make sure everything is in check-" Panic hurriedly added, hoping to remind Hades that instead of having monthly reports of each department, he was getting them on a weekly basis for the time being.
"But it also meant we got to hear from our cast member complaints about wanting revisions to their 401 kappas, improve working conditions, and," Pain hurriedly began to unfurl the never ending scroll until his eyes stopped at a line he had triple highlighted, dashed, and underlined. "… Uhhh," the obese pink imp shared a terrified look with his teal compatriot.
Panic's eyes flitted towards where Pain was looking and suddenly understood the other's hesitation.
"Oi, ya don't need to tell me conditions are hell down here," Hades pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just spit it out, okay?"
"… You ignored the list," Pain finally muttered.
"List?" Hades frowned, trying to recollect which list they were referring to. Hit list? List of bills? Grocery list? "What list? C'mon, ya gotta give me a little more to work with, Pain."
"Your waiting list for new cast members, sir," Panic twittered with a gulp.
Hades stared incredulously at his imps with a raised brow. " 'Scuse me? The last three hires we had were a cross-eyed minotaur, a non-stoning gorgon, and a measly little tweety bird. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the end of the list?" He enunciated with a frustrated lilt.
Nervous laughter began to emanate from his imps, and without any prior coordination at all, their eyes were drawn to the door of the throne room with unabashed hope. Yet no matter how long they stared at it, no one was coming through.
"Um, they were the last of your C-list monsters, your most conscientious."
Hades rolled his eyes. "So, we haven't hired anyone since. Boom, end of story. What else ya got?"
"Well," Panic began with a nervous inflection. "You haven't hired anyone since, but ugh- Mrs. Boss-"
Hades raised an unamused eyebrow at the nickname the two imps had bestowed upon Persephone ever since she got down here.
"- Lady Persephone-" Pain quickly corrected his brother with an unsure look at Hades. "-Has… Like five," he lifted all the fingers of one hand and an extra digit with his other since he had pterodactyl claws.
Hades frustratedly sighed. Was Persephone hiring non-monsters what really ticked off his workers? It was a possibility, but those lampades were just as monstrous as Echidna's brood; albeit with the small difference of having more prepossessing features. "Then tell those old boys my list doesn't apply to her and remind them making new employees outranks every schmo on that list."
Maybe what he needed to do was introduce Persephone to Echidna before the monsters got more organized as the mother of all monsters was the only one that had any sort of gray matter. He always knew it was a possibility that there would be some resentment towards choosing Persephone, or any Olympian for that matter, since many of the citizens of the Underworld- shades aside- saw them in a far different light. Course that was one reason he was looking forward to overtaking Olympus.
"Oh and send a holler to that ma of yours and tell her we'll swing by to see her. Little schmoozing will do her good and we can nip this unionizing meshuggah," he spat in flagrant disgust, "Heh, in the bud."
Oi, there was so much he needed to do, but the blur he was in this past week was literal hell. Hades frustratedly set his chin upon his waiting hand where it rested upon the arm of his throne.
One second he was being called to one corner and then another, putting out fires, sometimes literally, left and right. He barely saw much of Persephone in that time outside of work, with them being pulled in opposite directions and what not. He sometimes had meetings with her, but they were becoming more and more work related, and with how seriously Persephone took her work, he could barely even get one blatant flirt thrown at her before she gave him that look. That stern, coddling look that almost made her look every bit like her mother were it not for the smallest little corner of her mouth upturning in the most minuscule of smiles.
How well executed the flirt reached her ears was dependent on how deep that smirk was set. Hades felt himself crookedly smile at the memory.
Things were interesting to say the least with her. Was there still an unspoken tension in the air between them? Most definitely, but they were working through it the best way possible- Not talking about it.
Which of course was possibly the worst way to handle something, but they'd cross that bridge eventually. He didn't want to press her, but he only wished she started making her move, so he had tried to lay the groundwork.
Now that she understood he was flirting with her- y'know after marrying her it finally clicked he had the hots for her. Persephone had at first taken the subtle flirting as a flustered, liquid puddle of giddiness. However, because of how hectic each of their schedules had become with the sudden uptick of souls coming in on top of Persephone's think tank, they only saw each other during the workday when he was teaching her a new bit of business acumen. And from there, Persephone had not taken his flirting during those times as well as she had before, snapping at him to stay on task; which was easier to do with a cold-shouldered Persephone.
She was just a little high-strung right now, and he understood it was in her nature to want to give it her all. It would take her time to get used to the hectic routine coupled with her trying to learn the ropes, and it was partly why he encouraged her to work things on her own. Sure, it might've been because he didn't want the mundane office style relationship that was occurring between them to be the extent of what could develop, but it would also help build her own confidence.
Hades remembered how much he had questioned every decision he made back when he started running the Underworld. It was laughable how much he used to hang onto every piece of 'advice' Erebus had given him, hoping to glean any sort of guidance from his supposedly wise mentor, but as he had encountered problem after problem, Erebus quickly came up dry like a mirage in a hot sandy desert.
Turned out, Erebus only had to deal with sorting a hundred souls in a span of a couple thousand years, and Hades had one hundred souls coming in every ten minutes. So with no instruction manual to help him figure things out, he had to build from the ground up, depending on himself and his own wit.
The thousands of mistakes he made, the failed and unfinished projects that littered the Underworld, but through his failures he learned how to organize and plan without the need of anybody and turned this crumbling cave into a crowded Necropolis in a never ending cycle of expansion.
It was here where he thrived, where he took charge and stopped chaos in its tracks.
Sure, Zeus may have appointed him as god of the underworld, but he became the lord of the dead by his own hand.
And truth be told, that was why he liked the title so much. It was why he carried it around with pride, introducing himself as such every time some hapless mortal at their wit's end beseeched him.
"We will jot that one down, boss," Panic nodded.
"Great, great, now where is the report for that little spat between Athens and Sparta?" The flame haired god rubbed his hands in anticipation as a glint of malignant glee appeared in his eyes along with a new scroll in his hands. "Really gets the heart pumping when the biggest war of the century is 'round the corner, but not just any war, boys. A civil one," his face dropped in an unsettling grimace as memory began to rear her ugly little head.
"Hey, just like what we tried to do a couple months-" Pain felt his mouth fall flat at the stern glare Hades was giving him. If it wasn't for his urgency for the work day to be over, Hades may have let loose a little steam.
The flame haired god clicked his tongue, the only indication of his annoyance. "Yeah," he muttered in a grave tone. "Anyway," he began to unfurl the scroll with quick hands. "Let's see what ol' mutton head's up to…" his eyes scanned the scroll quickly, digesting the information with a speed few could manage, but war statistics was something he could conjure up numbers with at the turn of a sundial.
It helped after a millennia of practice when there were constant little spats between city states, or outside invaders like the Persians a few decades earlier, but this…
The flame-haired god couldn't stop the grin that creased his face the more information he gobbled up. He had to hand it to Ares, the guy wasn't great in the thinking department, but this really was shaping up to be more than just a standard sibling spat. All that effort Zeus put in to get the Olympics rolling and make the two war gods argue over something that didn't involve bloodshed. Now, it looked like things had escalated to a point where neither of them could back down, and Zeus had to take a back seat to let it play out.
"Another Trojan War," Hades smirked. "No, no, no, forget the ten year plan- this'll go on for decades," the back of his hand smacked the scroll appraisingly.
Pain and Panic began to share in their boss' elation with equally sharp, malignant grins.
"Oh, boss!" Panic suddenly spoke up.
"What's up?" Hades' eyes refused to leave the scroll, his eyes just about to scan the agriculture statistics of Sparta.
"How are you going to pay Ares back?"
A thoughtful gaze smoothed the harsh lines on Hades' face as he lowered the scroll. "Huh, slipped my mind. Guess I do owe the half-pint, love god something for making date night possible."
"And it'll really vex Athena won't it?" Pain added with a knowing raise of his eyebrows.
"Now that's just an added incentive," Hades chuckled, the scroll disappearing into smoke. "Don't mention that to Seph, 'kay?" He added in a harsh whisper.
Ever since he learned it was Athena who had pushed Persephone into blocking him out- thus causing him to follow through with Plan Beta, the dread lord of the dead had not forgiven her in the slightest unlike his lovelier, better half. Athena was already on his bad side for being Zeus' most ardent supporter, but now, there was no longer any doubt to how he viewed the decisive goddess of wisdom.
Pain and Panic mimicked each other's movements as they swayed their feet back and forth, their hands lifting as their claws made a locking motion over their mouths.
"… I'm thinking plague," Hades decided after a moment. "We haven't dished one out in a while and I'd love to see what's cooking in your egregious minds sometime next week. So scrap a focus group together and we'll get Ares a bit of a fighting chance."
"And the antidote?" Panic reminded Hades; much to the latter's chagrin.
Hades felt the flames on his head flicker at the reminder of Zeus' rule: That for every disease created there had to be some kind of antidote that could cure it. "Oi, not my problem right now," he rolled his eyes. "Now, is that it? Or we working another late night?"
Pain and Panic began to read through the rest of the list on their clipboards, making small thoughtful hums in the back of their throat. "Well, things are starting to go back to normal thanks to the new help. The lampades have finalized their perimeter controls in the asphodel fields, Persephone has finished her first report on last months new arrivals and with the Judges' assistance they've begun to sort through the re-admitted souls… Oh and the Furies have finished the repairs in the courthouse-"
"Remind me again how that went down," Hades passed a critical glower down to his imps. "One of the Furies got ticks and slammed into the wall to kill 'em?"
Pain and Panic felt their pupils shrink, and their stares becoming vacant as the limbs beneath them froze.
"Hehe, you know Cerberus," Pain managed to break out of his spell first. Reaching over, the imp began to repeatedly elbow his teal compatriot in the ribs until he snapped out of his fear.
"Yup!" Panic agreed with a high falsetto at the unexpected contact. "He just loves exploring around to see what everyone's up to-"
"And he just wanted to say hi to Mrs. Boss, and that's how the Fury got ticks!" Pain added with an awkward grin.
Hades accepted this information with thinly veiled disgust. "Jeez Louis, I gotta get that flea-ridden mutt a bath before an infestation gets rolling."
Pain and Panic exhaled together in silent relief. Lying to Hades was something they rarely ever did, but only in the most dire of circumstances. Persephone was a naturally cool tongue, and had saved the judge's hides when Hades demanded to know what had happened when he showed up in the court room almost two weeks back.
A fury gone hay-wire, and because of the chaos that ensued, the shades began to rebel. A few parts of that weren't necessarily a total lie, but between the three of them, neither one wanted to bring up Persephone's encounter with one of Hades' former allies.
She had sworn them to secrecy soon after, and the imps couldn't help but wonder if she did so to save the Judges from being punished, or because she wanted to talk to Hades about it privately. A chance she rarely had with Hades thanks to his own meticulousness and her own diligent nature.
"Oh, here's something," Panic suddenly spoke up, hoping to divert Hades attention away from the court incident. "You need to read over Persephone's first draft for amendments she has for the Elysium admittance before she presents it to the judges."
"Good, good, bring it here," Hades gestured his imps forward with a lax motion of his fingers. "Let's see how she's doing, huh?"
Pain and Panic flew up to Hades and handed him the scroll and took their respective positions on the arms of his throne.
"Has she seemed a tad bit stressed to you?" Hades suddenly exclaimed before he unrolled the scroll in question. "I know it's not something you say about a babe who's up before me, but, uh…"
Pain paused. "Y'know now that you mention it-"
"She has been going a little," Panic hesitated as his head bobbed left and right. "I don't want to say twitchy-"
"Wait! She's acting like Panic, no offense," Pain added. "And if you ask me she's trying to stay occupied all the time."
Panic chuckled. "That's it! It's almost like she's trying to be… distracted," the imp darkly exclaimed in a hush voice.
Hades couldn't help but agree. "Oi, you don't got ta tell me that. I made up some sort of by-law about a government mandated break, but she's either too stubborn- gets it from her ma, or she really isn't taking the hint."
"Maybe we can trick her into taking a break," Pain's face began to contort as as wide grin began to overtake his impish features. A quick wink directed at his compatriot who still sat on Hades' right side, signaled him to action.
"Y'know, boss," Panic leisurely exclaimed, his eyes flitting over to his magenta compatriot as the two began to work in tandem. They had been waiting for just this sort of exchange and now that they had their chance, they couldn't help but salivate at how nicely the opportunity brought itself up.
Panic followed Pain's lead and returned the gesture. "You could look over this with Persephone- spend some time together-"
"Take the night off-"
"Take her out on a walk with Cerberus-"
"Y'know," the imps exclaimed in unison. "A date!"
"Hey, okay, okay, I get it," Hades snapped, his skin beginning to turn a heated shade or orange. "We haven't had a date since before-"
"You kidnapped her," Pain reminded him without a second thought.
Wearing nothing but a deadpan expression, Hades flicked Pain across the room with just his index finger and sent the imp sailing into the neighboring wall.
Panic squeamishly watched as his brother's body became set into the stalagmite wall like a frieze on a temple and felt terror, icy and cold, begin to hitch in his heart. "… Permission to be frank, your most mercilessness?"
Hades shifted his jaw to the side in annoyance. "Nothing would make me happier than to let you join him."
"… Hehe… just ignore me," Panic managed to force an innocent, nervous smile up to his boss as he fervidly began to nod his head in agreement, flapping his bat wings to put as much distance between him and his boss.
"Great. Now, if you'll be needing me, boys," Hades rolled up the scroll and sat up from his obsidian throne and made his way down the dais. "I got a mutt to de-flea."
In a column of flames, Hades erupted onto Cerberus' little corner of the Underworld near the gates that separated the land of the dead from that of the living. New arrivals from the other side were making their way to the place they would call home for the rest of eternity, milling past him in their mournful, trance like state to the banks of the River Styx where they would wait for Charon to ferry them across to be judged and sentenced.
In a huff, the lord of the dead gripped the leash and the gigantic bottle of Flea-Be-Gone shampoo tightly between his hands, still fuming after the meeting with his imps. Their words echoing full frontal in his mind.
Okay, yeah, sure he hadn't made an obvious move since after the wedding, but was it his fault he wanted to play it cool and let her to make the first move? Was it too much to ask that he wanted to be wooed? To be flirted with? To be-
Oi that's what he gets for marrying a modest goddess who didn't have much of an inkling about the facts of life. Ironic for a goddess of life, but most goddesses had an aptitude for being in ironic situations. Look at Hera, poor gal's the goddess of marriage and she had a husband who went through affair after affair like it was a revolving door.*
With his mind now refocusing on the reason he had appeared near the gates of the Underworld, Hades took stock of the crowd of shades that milled past him, but something about seeing only the ghostly apparitions put his mind in a state of unease.
Why hadn't he been toppled over yet?
Not one lolling, giant tongue in sight, no musty breath of rotting flesh and brimstone slapped him in the schnoz, and no slobber coated every inch of his threads. In fact, no sounds of ginormous paws beating against the ground echoed in his ears, nor did the ground shake the gates of the Underworld as one would anticipate before being struck by something with muscles akin to adamantium steel.
Where was Cerberus?
"I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore," Hades grumbled, throwing his arms up in defeat, dropping the bottle of shampoo in the process. "Okay, okay, focus. If I was a pea-brained mutt, where would I go?"
Maybe he was with Seph, he mused. His imps had mentioned they had reconnected after all. So where was she?
That was when another troubling thought set his face into a scowl. Oi, if she let him in the palace he was going to go off. Cerberus had a job, he wasn't a household pet.
But that still didn't answer the question: Where in the Underworld is Persephone? With the method she took for working, the babe could literally be anywhere between Elysium and Tartarus.
Not knowing where to start his search, Hades approached the River Styx where Charon was patiently waiting for him. He didn't know how the ferryman always knew when he needed his services, but he couldn't care less why, it just made things more convenient for him.
"Hey, you seen Persephone today?" Hades boarded the boat.
The usually taciturn ferryman regarded the lord of the dead with an indifferent expression on his skeletal face. It was rare to hear his king inquire something of him, so Charon opened his skeletal jaw and in a raspy voice muttered, "I gave her a ride way before dawn- just like every day."
Hades twisted his body to look at Charon. This was news to him. "Huh… She go out and pay ol' Demeter a visit or something?"
"She never leaves," Charon admitted after a moment of silence, his rowing never slowing as he spoke. "She just waits to see if anyone is standing outside the gates. Maybe an hour at most, but that's routine for me now."
Hades absorbed this information with a prickling fusion of dread and curiosity. Was she contemplating leaving? Was she expecting someone? Hermes? Her mother?
An unnerving chill as frigid as the lands far North of Macedon went up Hades spine.
The mother-in-law….
If Persephone invited Demeter without telling him, he was fleeing to Egypt. No way- no how was he going to be anywhere near that barley mother.
"Oh…"
The rasping of Charon's breath hitching, caught Hades' attention in an instant.
Charon never broke- never.
"What's with y… Oh- Seph's gonna kill you…" Hades turned his head, but the god was already switching gears, following the eyeless gaze of the skeletal ferryman and the sight that greeted him had him erupting and disappearing in a column of flames.
"If I don't kill you first, you, lousy mutt!" Hades cursed as he reappeared on the Asphodel Fields, not even six feet from where he was before. Flames erupted from the edge of his chiton as he madly paced the once immaculate landscape.
All around him, asphodel flowers had been mercilessly ripped from the ground, roots and all, littering the flat plain in a mad erratic display that sent the lord of the dead's ichor boiling.
Some of the survivors were half chewed, or simply tossed around like rag dolls. Their once healthy ram-rod straight stems broken and bent- at least if they were lucky enough to avoid being devoured. Freshly dug-up holes dotted the landscape as well, and obvious signs of a large creature rolling around the fields had left dents all across the once peaceful Asphodel Fields.
"No, no, no," Hades frantically paced around the plains ready to rip his own face off in rage the more he passed through the damage.
Seeing the fields in such a state would have left him overjoyed if they weren't a certain someone's creation. Since day one he was ready to rip and tear them apart with his own flames. Life in the land of the dead? That threw off his entire aesthetic! But the second he found out they were Persephone's, he never voiced another complaint about them. And ever since she moved down here this was the one hobby she allowed herself to have. But just to see her work being mutilated like this- the work she tirelessly poured herself into and made her feel all the more welcome in such a foreign land.
Oh he was absolutely livid.
"Cerberus!" The god roared so loud that not even the River Styx uttered a single trickle as flames as scorching as Tartarus erupted from him.
Before he could shout the mongrel's name again, Hades suddenly felt eyes on him and locked gazes with a green lampade far from where he stood, watching him in the center of what Cerberus had decimated.
The skittish thing took one look at Hades and booked it.
"WAit- don't get Seph!" Hades shouted, and prepared to teleport himself to stop her from running to fetch Persephone, but he stopped himself.
No, he couldn't focus on the nymph right now. Not when there's a giant three headed dog making chop salad out of Seph's flora. Looking down at the ground, Hades took note of a path of destruction amid the chaos and knew exactly who was waiting at the end of it.
In a blur of smoke, Hades reappeared before his wandering dog. "You, mangy mutt, when I get through with you," he hooked his chain leash onto Cerberus' collar and yanked at it to get his attention. He rarely ever had to use the leash on the mongrel- only during bath times and when he had to get his shots, but every other time he could trust him enough to listen and follow him anywhere. Today, though, after what he'd done, he was getting restrained.
"You're gonna wish I'd let that vet fix you. No, y'know what, I'm going to quit wasting time- you're getting fixed," Hades angrily snapped at his dog.
Cerberus emitted a low whine from each of his three heads, but that long high-pitched sound was interrupted by a sudden hiccup from the left head, then the middle, and finally the right. A spasm prickled across Cerberus' spine, causing the dog to suddenly start shifting from paw to paw and his tail stopped its wagging.
"Don't give me that look," Hades snapped, yanking at the leash again to get their rapidly diminishing attention, and just like how he'd done when he potty trained Cerberus when he was a puppy, he grabbed the closest head and pushed it into the soil to show him what he'd done wrong.
"I don't get it. I feed you Thrinacian* steaks- and let me tell ya baby- they ain't cheap- food off my own platter, and you get ta eat any mortal that wanders down here, and now you wanna turn around on me and go vegan?! You don't do that! Seph worked hard on this you mangy ball of- YAH!"
Without any warning, Hades felt his arm nearly get ripped out of his socket as Cerberus took off. The dog lumbered across the fields in a maddened state, his giants maws beginning to open and spew frothing white foam.
"If you slow down now, we don't have to go to the vet!" Hades tried to placate the beast, but Cerberus either didn't understand him, or just knew better than to trust the promises of his master.
"CERBERUS- CERBERUS NO!"
Persephone jumped in the middle of her paperwork as a long shout pierced the stillness of the Underworld office, causing her to break the point of her quill and left a smear of ink all over the scroll she was writing. "Oh hell," she cursed. "Did you hear something?"
Without looking up from the scroll she was proofreading, Melinoe recognized the shouting of Hades instantly.
"No."
Somehow, Hades kept his hold- and his arm, as the giant three-headed dog continued to drag him throughout the fields without breaking stride. This was no longer the puppy who used to get tuckered out after a little play time. With his senses snapping him into action, Hades' other hand grabbed onto the chains as well to help him try and yank Cerberus back with all his might.
"Cerberus, heel! HEEL!"
Hades felt the chains beginning to strain, not one link was slackening as he remained embattled in an unrelenting tug-of-war with his dog. "C'mon, don't give out on me now!"
But just as the god feared, he felt the leash beginning to give way. The excessive strain on the links being pulled in either direction by the lord of the dead and the massive three headed dog was beginning to give. Before his very eyes, the chains began to deform, expanding like the metal was heated. Yet no matter what he could do, the chains ripped in half like dried papyrus.
Frantically, Hades managed to stop himself from flying forward, disappearing and reappearing rigidly on one of the sloping hills of the fields. Couple weeks ago these hills were non existent, but Persephone really had gone ham on trying to add character to the landscape.
Fuming on the high ground, Hades watched his three headed dog running further and further away with the remaining links of chain bouncing off his back. Glancing at the remaining chain link in his hand left the god silently steaming as his eyes scanned over the runic patent on the handle.
That is the last time I buy something international. Svartalfheim approved my blue-
"Hades, what's going on here?!" Persephone's distressed shout rang from behind him.
Turning around, the god grimaced watching Persephone run towards him with her skirts hiked up as two lampades, Melinoe and that green one from earlier trailed far behind her. The expression she wore was of mixed emotions that did not ease him in the slightest.
To say she looked mad was an understatement.
"Hey, funny seeing you out here, sweetness, my light, my vixen, my-" the god attempted a laugh like everything was fine, but Persephone was having none of that.
"Drop it. I literally just saw you wakeboarding with Cerberus."
"-Schmoopsie poo…" Hades hesitantly added as he registered Persephone's face filled with a mixture of worry and heavily restrained frustration. Looking past the wife, Hades noticed the sage colored lampade, giving him a smug grin and instantly felt a flare of frustration coarse through him. "Hey, okay, so Cerberus has gone a bit hay-wire. I mean who wouldn't after seeing grass for the first time in decades, so," Hades started again.
"It's fine, I get it," Persephone interrupted him, and angrily began to remove her pumps and pushed them into Melinoe's waiting hands before she began to quickly walk down towards Cerberus who was rolling around in the fields again, scaring off a gathered crowd of shades. "He doesn't know any better."
"Hey, whoa, doing damage control is my department, babe," Hades blocked her path before Persephone could approach Cerberus any further. "And last I checked you've had a heh, hellish week."
"Can't do that," Persephone phased right through him. "You saw that foam coming out of his mouth and the missing flower patches, so if he keels over then it's my fault, and knowing you, that leaves me with liability," Persephone crazily laughed, her magenta eyes wide-eyed and more eccentric.
Jeez, maybe a date wouldn't be such a bad idea to help her unwind, Hades inwardly thought.
"Wait, Seph, he's my dog I can take care of him. How 'bout you get the rest of your ghoul squad and take note of the damage and I'll get you a check for new fertilizer- no fish this time- while I go be judge, jury, and executioner for that mutt."
"What? No!" Persephone stopped her marching to turn around and stare at him in horror. "I don't want to- look," she huffed, changing her approach and taking a second to calm down. Taking a breath, Persephone started again. "I'm mad too, but you can't punish him now. He's sick!" She gestured towards the dog.
"Sick? Please, Seph, sweetness," Hades laughed at the absurdity of it. "I've seen him play this game before. Cerberus is just tryna be Mister Boo-hoo to get attention, and it takes someone who's lost the ability to pity, ergo me, to take it."
"Babe, he ate my asphodels," Persephone deadpanned.
Whatever Hades was about to say was completely lost to him. Did she just call me babe?
"You do know not everything I make is non-toxic, right?" Persephone added amid Hades' sudden hesitance.
Being pulled back into reality, Hades slid back into his usual wit. "Really? Little miss sweetness made poisonous plants, huh?" Hades mused as the smirk he was wearing on his face grew all the wider. Why was every little tidbit about her so utterly fascinating? "What'll dear old ma think," he teased.
"So I dabbled…" Persephone lamely excused.
"I'm just offended you've never even made me a little something."
"Just wait, you'll find something in your coffee tomorrow," Persephone quipped.
"Aw, the wife making me coffee? How domestic of you," Hades scrunched his face in an overly exaggerated smile.
Persephone mimicked his expression, but her's was coupled with slight annoyance at Hades' relentless teasing. "Keep it up and that won't be the only domestic thing I'll do."
"Okay, okay, but I'm telling you, he's fine," Hades enunciated in a contrite snap. "I've seen this dog eat thousand year old rotting flesh and bones like it ain't nobody's business. What's a little flower gonna-" Hades gaze swiveled back to Cerberus. "HEY! NO- DROP IT!"
Persephone watched as Hades raced before her, giving chase to Cerberus who ran with a whole bush between one of his mouths. She didn't know whether to laugh at Hades' eccentricities or to groan and lament over the continued destruction of her fields at the paws of a canine monster.
"GET BACK OVER HERE!" Hades shouts began to increase in volume such that the poor author writing this began to weep that she couldn't use something larger than all caps to illustrate his rage.
The three headed dog had begun to slow, both from guilt and shame finally rearing their ugly head to the sudden nauseousness in his stomach that made him feel suddenly overheated and his vision shaky. His giant pink tongue began to loll out of each head as more white froth began to issue forth and made him drop the latest bush he had picked.
A curse too unseemly and vulgar for children's ears fell from Hades' lips before he whipped around to witness one of Cerberus' heads releasing a glob of unidentified mush.
Rushing to the three-headed dog's side, Hades was there first to see all three of Cerberus' heads begin to loll in a dazed like state. Three bright pink tongues hung out like a drunk man who had lost feeling and control of his own body, their chest heaving in an effort to get out what was making him feel sick.
"That's what you get for eating so much, you, stupid mutt," Hades snapped, but there was no enmity in his voice anymore as he secretly began to rub the offending head under the chin in the slightest show of sympathy.
"Oh look at him," Persephone cooed, making her way beside Hades. Making a whistling noise, Persephone got the attention of one head and rested a a gentle hand on one of Cerberus' snouts, but in the process a trail of liquid began to slide down onto her. "Wonderful," she muttered sarcastically as her hand came away completely coated in an unknown bile that had been at the cusp of Cerberus' mouth. "Has he had his shots?"
"Uh yeah, he's one of my employees," Hades defensively sniped.
"He's your pet," Persephone softly put with a disappointed sigh.
"-And as my employee he's already met certain qualifications to work for me, so as of last month, he's got every shot- under the sun- and earth. Alpha through omega."
"Alright, alright, and how's his heartbeat like?" Persephone moved to inspect the vomit on the ground. With a crinkle of her upturned nose, the goddess nearly gagged at the smell. Despite this, she still bent down to see what was in the vomit.
"Little fast for my taste. How's he looking your end?"
"Wait, this is wrong," Persephone continued to stare at the vomit at her feet, poking at it with a stick she had just summoned. Sifting through the boiling mass of white foam, she began to take note of many little fragments almost like pieces of white flint enmeshed into the bile. "It's mostly bones."
"Maybe he got some stuck in his throat," Hades groaned as he flicked off a glob of slobber that just fell from one of Cerberus' mouth from where he stood pressing his ear to the canine's side. "Happened to me once or twice with moussaka."
"No, it's in tiny pieces which means," Persephone straightened herself as an idea struck her. "He hasn't thrown up what's making him sick! Can you lay down for me, sweetums?" She softly crooned, but Cerberus barely acknowledged her, his focus entirely on Hades as the god now took turns comforting each head with rubs and halfhearted attempts at insults.
"Look what you got me going through for youse- you lousy, miserable- oh don't whine…" The sudden high pitched whine sounded as close to a cry as the monstrous dog could manage, times three, and with those innocent blood red eyes staring down at him for comfort, the flame haired god felt something in him shift.
Persephone meanwhile cheekily grinned at the flame haired god's rare display of affection for the fifty foot hellhound. "Hades, could you get him to lay down for me?"
Removing his attention away from his dog, Hades shot her a quizzical look. "What? Why?"
"Just make sure he doesn't try to run away." Persephone flicked her wrist and a grove of dark stems and leaves began to emerge from the ground.
Hades' brow furrowed in suspicion, gazing first at the plants and then at that determined glint in Persephone's eyes. "Seph, if you kill my dog, I will divorce you," he stood protectively with his arms outstretched in front of a very confused Cerberus.
"Oh man, Eubulus, you don't think that Hades guy would be mad if we tried to bring his dog back from the dead?" Persephone quipped. "I mean c'mon, we're already down here, how hard could it be to resurrect him if it came to that?"
"Seph, he's a dog, he doesn't have a soul."
Persephone gasped. "How can you say that right in front of him?" She tried to cover a pair of Cerberus' ears, but she could barely even manage to reach one.
"Trust me, I'm in the business of souls, I would know."
"Every living creature has a soul," Persephone declared adamantly. "Even this poor, sick baby has one."
"Whatever," Hades rolled his eyes, his shoulders becoming tense as he understood what Persephone was planning. "Now could you not do what you're about to do."
Bending down, she began to cut the fuzzy, succulent plants that she had just created. "Hades, please. Trust me," Persephone flashed him her large magenta eyes that made the god's cold black heart skip. "He won't be the first creature I've treated, and definitely not the first dog."
"But this isn't a regular dog, I mean just look at him!" Hades sharply gestured at the fifty foot, three-headed hellhound as all three sets of blood red eyes stared down at him. Foam continued to froth from his mouth as a pained whine warbled in his throat. "No offense, boy."
"Okay, so he's not a regular puppy, but it's the same basic principle," Persephone attempted to stay lighthearted the more she gathered the plants, ripping them out of the ground and inspecting their roots. "He's going to be in a lot of pain for a longer time if he keeps those asphodels in his gut, but if we make him throw it up now, he'll get better a lot sooner."
Hades shared a look with Cerberus, and the dog with his master.
"You said you'd take liability, right?"
Persephone's face fell into a scowl. "You can be so insufferable sometimes."
"Sometimes? Am I slipping that bad, babe?" Hades sarcastically exclaimed.
"Just open his mouth," Persephone deadpanned.
"Alright, Cerberus, you heard the lady," Hades whistled and soon Cerberus was down on his haunches, his heads sagging wearily as his mouths continued to froth a sickly white. Making his way to Cerberus' left, the lord of the dead began to prod at the closest head, squeezing the bottom of the snout to coax him to open his mouth.
Persephone carefully inched closer, silently praying the dog suddenly didn't jump up and run, but based on the grip Hades had on his snout, he wasn't moving. "Okay, do you think this is enough for one head?" She gestured at the gathered amount of herbs in her hands.
"We only need to give it to one, he's only got one stomach."
"He does?" Persephone blinked.
"Don't let the mutt fool you. The only thing he's got multiple of are heads, brain cells are in short supply with, heh, just the one."
Persephone sighed. "Well, I don't believe that. You're a good boy- a smart boy," she lilted to Cerberus' two other heads as Hades stuck his hands in the canine's jaw, forcing the left head's mouth to open wide, revealing the sharp, yellowed teeth and the swollen pink tongue and gums of the feared underworld guard dog.
Cerberus, on his part, offered little restraint, and barely even registered what was going on anymore as Persephone reached over and carefully dumped a clump of freshly picked roots onto his tongue, near the back of his throat.
"What is that anyway?" Hades removed his hands, letting Cerberus close his mouth who began to chew the bitter roots, and swallowed them with flagrant disgust.
"Huh?" Persephone muttered confusedly, but the goddess reminded herself that Hades had little to no knowledge about plants. "Oh these are emetic herbs. I've used these to work for- you name it: cows, goats, horses- anything that had upset tummies."
"So he's a horse now?"
"Okay so that's not a great metaphor because horses can't throw up when they're sick- y'know the disease colic?" Persephone laughed, but earned a bemused stare in return. "Anyway, dogs eat grass to help them digest," Persephone shortly explained. "I guess Toto wanted to see if asphodels would help with all that junk food you feed him and now he's-"
"Junk food?!" Hades spat. The flame haired god flared defensively at the dig much more deeply than Persephone expected. "Puh-lease! I give him the best-"
"And this is coming from a guy who snacks on worms," Persephone reminded him with a frown. "That's only healthy if you're a bird."
"Oh and when's the last time you ate, little miss busy bee?" Hades returned the heated comment with one of his own. "Bet you can't remember with all the things you jam pack in your schedule."
"So what if I'm busy all the time?" The prongs of Persephone's crown hair began to emit small sparks of lilac flames. "I'm committed to making sure I can live up to your standards and get your Underworld back in working order!"
"Hey, don't say it like that- it's yours too now! No thanks to me, huh?" Hades disdainfully retorted.
"Then if I'm one of the heads," Persephone's voice began to rise. "Why are you so eager to make sure we work separately?! I get that I'm learning the ropes, but why is it when there's an opportunity-"
"I'm taking a note outta Hera's handbook. I know what happens when you mix work and pleasure, but that wouldn't matter would it?!"
"What do you mean by that?!" Persephone shouted. Gone was the dove-like crooning earlier only to be replaced with a raging fiery goddess.
"That's right you haven't noticed since I've been getting nothing outta you. I mean do you have any idea how much this has affected me too?! It's not just all about you, and I can't keep pushing all the effort into this just to wait and see when you come around and actually reciprocate for once!"
Persephone's voice fell in stunned silence. Any word or comment she was about to make died in her throat along with any angered thought in her head. Something bitterly cold struck her, and the goddess couldn't hide her surprise on her face fast enough.
Even Hades' mouth twisted in surprise at what he had just spouted. "Seph, I didn't mean-"
But whatever Hades was about to say was quickly quashed by the horrible retching sound that filled the pause. That silence, that stillness between the two immortals gone like the crack of a whip.
Cerberus retched. The bile purple and black erupted all over the fields, getting on Hades and Persephone's outstretched hands as they held Cerberus' heads, supporting him as he emptied his stomach. Remnants of the asphodels were visible in the mess, their entwined stems and flowering heads were everywhere, coating the fields in that wretched bile, sizzling like acid and burning them at the mere touch.
Cerberus growled at the chthonic gods' interference at first, trying to get rid of them and bite at them for coming near him, but the two of them were stubborn and adamant to be there until the whole process was through.
Hades felt Cerberus begin to shift, felt him try to lift himself to his feet, but the god was not having it. Reaching out he grabbed hold of a neck with each hand and forced Cerberus to stay grounded. "No! Seph, help me hold him down!"
Cerberus began to struggle, yowling loudly and excessively as he twisted in Hades' grip.
"Shhh," Persephone wrapped her arms around the remaining neck and tried to soothe the beast as he bucked and kicked. "None of that now. Hades, I'm going to give him more, I don't think his gut's empty yet."
"Do it fast before the next round."
Persephone's hair began to twist and reach out as more herbs began to emerge from the ground. The tendrils wrapped themselves around the herbs, pulled them out and handed them into Persephone's waiting arms.
"Eat up," she coaxed the herbs into his mouth just like before, but Cerberus spat them out with a growl. "Oh c'mon!" Persephone cursed as more vomit erupted from his mouth, but just like the previous wave, there was less than before. The emetic herbs were losing juice.
"Give 'em to me, I'll make him eat it!" Hades shouted over Cerberus' yowls.
The two gods shifted their attention to the middle head, and with Hades' help, he opened the struggling jaws.
Persephone made a grab for the herbs he had just rejected and was ready to chuck it into Cerberus' open maw, but his tongue reached out and thwacked Hades in the face, extinguishing his flame hair.
"Babe, you okay?!"
Hades slid a hand over his disgruntled face and wiped the slobber off, allowing his flame hair to reignite in the process. "I'm fine, just toss the flaming plants!"
Wasting no time, Persephone threw the herbs in, and as soon as they even touched Cerberus' mouth, Hades shut the dog's jaws before he could spit them out again. Hades kept them tightly closed as Cerberus continued to struggle. He twisted his body and his other heads began to join into the fray and have a dig at the chthonic gods that were putting him through such pain, but with an adamantium embrace over his middle snout, Cerberus was forced to swallow the bitter herbs.
Feeling Cerberus swallow underneath his embrace, Hades released his hold on the middle head's snout, and moved to restrain the necks instead. "Thank the Fates."
"Not yet," Persephone grunted as another bout of retching continued.
The waves continued without stop, but with each new wave, each time Persephone fed Cerberus more emetic herbs, a spell of exhaustion began to overtake the poor creature.
The two chthonic gods alternated in the task of managing two heads then one and so on, doing their best go reach into Cerberus' mouths to help the poor beast who could barely lift his head up anymore. For even though the monstrous canine had one stomach, so much was being thrown up that each head spewed vomit like a geyser every half a minute.
By the end of it, the pair found themselves sticky and their hands and chitons coated with that same black and purple bile that was smeared across the area they were situated in. Many asphodels that had been in the splash zone had shriveled and burned, their once healthy crowns of flower dead and gone, but something began to peak from underneath them.
Assured that everything was out, Hades and Persephone shared relieved grins and glances. Neither of them wanted to bring up what was exchanged just before their attention's were stolen, and the heaviness in the air was only coupled by the teary blood red eyes that blearily looked at his masters.
"We can't leave him out here. Not in this state."
Hades sighed beside her. "Just this once I'll let him in."
"How's he going to fit through the door?"
Hades put a hand to his chin in thought, but as soon as his hand grazed his skin, the god yanked it away. Forgot I'm covered in slime.
"Can he shrink?"
Hades considered Persephone's idea with surprised acceptance. "We could try that."
Before Persephone could ask him to explain his idea, Hades began to grow. The god soared above her until he finally reached a height where Cerberus was to him the size of a large dog.
Persephone soon followed suit and the two of them now towered over the Asphodel Fields, over the underworld, their domain. If she had wanted to, she could put a hand to the ceiling and touch the thin barrier that separated the underworld from the land of the living, but she did not, instead marveling at the sight she had briefly glimpsed on her descent a couple weeks earlier.
Hades bent down and picked up Cerberus, but Persephone offered a lending hand, steadying the outside heads from straining themselves and setting them into a comfy position as Hades turned Cerberus around so that his heads could rest on his shoulder. Now that he was carefully tucked into Hades' arms like one would a toddler or a very large baby, the two gods walked across the Asphodel fields and the River Styx in just ten steps until they stood outside the Underworld palace.
The two of them began to shrink down to their previous heights, and just as Hades predicted, Cerberus shrunk along with them.
"Poor baby," Persephone cooed, softly petting one of Cerberus' head as he began to doze on Hades' shoulder.
"Poor us, we had to take care of the little yutz," Hades groaned, his hand sliding up and down Cerberus' back in a repeated motion. "So I say we deserve a night in the bath house. You want to go first?"
Persephone stared at him thunderstruck. "We have a bath house?!"
If Hades' hands weren't full he would've slapped himself. "Do yourself a favor and fire Millie already."
"Melinoe- and no, she's a great secretary," Persephone assured him. "But I'll take that bath, and… Once you're done cleaning up," she began to fumble with her fingers, biting the inside of her cheek anxiously. "How about we talk for a bit. We really haven't talked talked in a while."
Hades felt a wave of guilt wash over him. So she did remember their argument. "… Yeah, I think we should."
"And I can make something for us too. I'm sure you're just as hungry as I am," Persephone added with a dry laugh.
"Maybe not as much, but I'd love to," Hades managed to say amid the still prevalent feeling of guilt.
He couldn't believe he had said that to her- had been vulnerable for that second and spewed his own observations and feelings. The feelings part was no secret anyone knew he was stewing about wanting to be wooed just as much as she was being wooed, but her lack of eating? It was something that had been bothering him, and though he was no stranger to skipping meals, he had not seen her eat once. He had brushed it off that he rarely saw her as it was, but when Millie had confirmed his suspicions through a dry comment in passing, it had not slipped his mind since the more he realized she wasn't getting any rest on top of that.
"Good, it'll give us a well deserved break…" Persephone twittered, she was being unusually sheepish, and Hades knew she was replaying their argument on repeat in her mind. She really did overthink things too much. "Oh and make sure Cerberus gets some water once he wakes up. He lost a lot of fluids so he needs to replenish them."
"Will do, sweetness."
Ever since I read about the greek myth of wolfsbane I was just itching to give it my own spin. Ovid's version though about Heracles last labor when he took Cerberus up to King Eurystheus. Y'see Cerberus had never been in the overworld and the sunlight made the poor pupper start feeling really sick so he started throwing up and all that vomit later turned into wolfsbane. But I went with this route b/c I've heard tons of stories about dogs eating flowers in their owner's flower beds like carnations and daisies that are really poisonous to dogs. And in the tv show Cerberus really wasn't affected by sunlight when he was featured, so here you go.
*Common trend I've noticed in Greek goddesses, but there's always something a bit ironic about how they're the goddess of such and such but at the same time they're like jk. Y'know with Athena being a goddess of wisdom but does a war thing. Aphrodite is stuck in a loveless marriage/she's a goddess of beauty who loves Hephaestus but he has affection for Athena. Oh and the one I will definitely be using revolves around Persephone. Some might've guessed with me using Melinoe as a nymph, so, I leave that with y'all.
BTW this is part 1 of a 2-part chapter. So we won't be time jumping like the chapter after that will.
Till then, my dear readers!
And as always please fave, follow, and review!