Rewriting Fate
A/N: AU (for obvious reasons) of the Hercules Animated TV show episode 13: Tapestry of Fate. If you haven't seen it, that's okay, this will touch upon the main highlights of the episode, but will not be a word for word remake. This has nothing to do with Now Hiring but will borrow slight elements.
To celebrate Now Hiring turning 4, I decided to post this since I didn't meet the deadline for the anniversary. *shrugs*
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from Disney's Hercules, nor have I ever claimed to own them. My ideas, bad OOC moments, and inability to write angst are all my own.
You have been warned.
"So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell?"
-Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Hades was many things. A god, a lord, a judge, a king, and if you listened closely to the homilies from the priests when they placed coins on the eyes of a mortal who would never open them again. Or maybe when stories are whispered around after dark, long after the hearth was put out and the darkness of shadows was too much to bear, he was the devil.
Plain and simple. But even devils can dream of heaven.
For as long as he could remember, Hades had sought the seat of heaven ever since he was cast out of its pearly gates only to be locked down far beneath the earth to lord over a bleak, lifeless kingdom while his own brothers enjoyed the sea and the sky and all the wonders their respective kingdoms held. From the sea creatures that playfully rode upon the waves to the birds who took flight in the open-sky. The two eldest brothers lorded over realms where the earth was in their periphery and the sun graced their kingdom with his warm, inviting rays.
But what did he receive, dear reader?
Hades had a kingdom alright, his own personal hell, filled to the brim with the restless and moaning dead, and after eons of toiling at his thankless job, the god was at his breaking point. Yes, Zeus had promised him a kingdom to rule in thanks for his help defeating the Titans, but since he drew the shortest lot, he was given the least of the three lands.
Over the eons, Hades wrestled with the tedious job of ruling the Underworld giving it his all and just like Zeus had done in restoring peace to the cosmos, Hades established order to the restless land of the dead. A tall order because unlike other kingdoms that could handle themselves, this land came with a high maintenance that lesser, lazy, simple-minded gods would be erroneously unprepared for.
For Hades, it took him several millennia to get the Underworld fully operational, but after everything fell into place, boredom and monotony began to pick away at the stringent lord of the dead. He had returned to Olympus finally after an eon away, hoping at last for the welcoming arms of his family and their praise for accomplishing the impossible. Instead, he found that after being locked away for so long, the stench of death and decay hung heavily upon him and his robes. His once shining aura that signified his status as a god had lost its radiance.
His return had only incurred cold shoulders and even colder side glances the way they turned their faces away. His own face was lost amid the sea of a new generation of gods that began to crop up after the Titanomachy. At one point, he had been the youngest, but now that title was stripped away and handed over to a round ruddy baby who looked more like a grape than an actual godling.
Those passes, those glares, Hades began to grow indignant at the way they ignored him. At how they shuddered away from him at his mere presence, but the one god who didn't show an inkling of disdain was the very god who had set him upon his path.
Zeus had been so thrilled to see him again. He had often wondered why his baby brother had not been around, but he didn't try to reach out to him with a whole earth to distract him and a new race of intelligent beings with even lovelier daughters to lord over. A distraction that passed the time far more than he ever cared to notice.
And it was this realization that set Hades over the edge.
How could you forget him? Had he not realized how long he had been gone? How much he worked to bring order while Zeus crafted an existence with luxuries and played with an earth full of wonders while he toiled away without even the smallest thanks or reprieve?
The one attempt- the one single attempt Zeus had done of interfering with his life in order to make amends had gone abysmally. For that, Hades could never forgive him for his sorry attempt at reconciliation. Of creating a bridge that would have surely connected him back to Olympus had Zeus not forgotten a glaring detail that backfired in both god's faces.
Maybe that event was what truly pushed Hades over the edge, but ever since, he had been meticulously planning to somehow gain access to the world he had been cast out of. To rule on high at the highest rung of the cosmos and have everything Zeus had taken away from him and show him how it felt like.
Since then, Hades had crafted scheme after scheme to somehow steal the throne of heaven from the very brother who had appointed him king of this necropolis. Some schemes seemed to work at the beginning- like when he had tricked the Olympians into taking a dip into the waters of Lethe, or when he had tried to put them all into a permanent sleep during a drama festival. Yet they all turned out to be flukes because of one recurring theme.
His snooping, wanna-be-hero, but actual zero of a nephew, Hercules.
That little yutz always managed to get in the way. Somehow, wrecking his plans and leaving him to the mercy of his big bro, who never seemed to be an arm's throw away from a lightning bolt.
How Hercules managed to stay alive this long after being turned mortal, no thanks to his imps who couldn't finish the easiest job, was a wonder to to the lord of the dead. Yet ever since he found out his nephew was still kicking, he made it his prime objective to get Hercules under his permanent custody if you catch his drift.
However, for all his courage and up-standing nature, at the end of the day, Hercules was still a guy, and a teenage one at that. And if Hades knew anything about teenagers, he was bound to slip eventually.
He would just have to sit back and watch. And as a god renowned for reading how the players moved on the board, Hades could always anticipate when someone was about to make a wrong move. This time, however, he was completely unprepared for how divinely his nephew had messed up.
All on a day that felt like any other.
The day had progressed as usual in the Underworld. Souls came piling in slower than usual, no thanks to the warmer seasons rolling out the green carpet topside, while he sat contemplating his place at the bottom of the cosmos on his obsidian throne.
When suddenly a frazzled soul came into view. His wonky eyes desperately searched for an escape, but already the pull of the Underworld was upon him and could do nothing to escape its grasp as it snagged him away into the downward staircases that emanated an eerie green glow from where a sign listing the number of souls served hung above.
For a second, the dread lord of the dead could've sworn he'd seen that face somewhere, but after serving billions of souls for eons, why would one face stick out in an ocean of insignificant shades?
"Another ding, bada bing…" Hades boredly lamented, his eyes nearly glazing over at how banal his day was turning out.
Ever since spring cropped up, his numbers had been dropping significantly day by day to the point where he'd get a single soul almost every hour like clockwork, but even that average was starting to dwindle. "Thrills. I'm absolutely thrilled over here."
What are we at? Four today? Hades boredly rolled his eyes before a rush of resolve began to build traction inside him faster than fleet-footed Atalanta. He couldn't take one more second of this, he needed action and pronto!
"Who can I kick around? Pain, Panic, get over here," Hades called and in an instant his imps came scampering in and set themselves below the dais where their boss sat tapping away at the arm of his throne. "Go take care of the new arrival."
"Yes, sir!" Their voices rang together, but their sanguine tone held a secret only the other recognized. Pain and Panic were careful to note the glazed expression on their boss' face and almost immediately the two were already thinking up a plan to lift him out of his sour mood.
"But uh if you're free for the next hour, maybe you should go and settle in the new soul," Panic grinned up at his boss.
Pain, too, gave a picture perfect grin of innocence as he followed Panic's lead. "That personal touch goes a long way to get their eternal doom started off right, sir."
Before Hades could begin to offer a reply, his eyes went wide as if a bolt passed through one ear and out the other. His skin erupted in a flurry of goosebumps as light filled his eyes and for that split second, he couldn't hear a thing, couldn't see a thing except for an eerily familiar feeling of time running backwards.
Hades lurched forward in his throne as whatever had him in its hold released him. "Whoa, did we, like, not pay the bill?"
No sooner had those words slipped out of his mouth, alarm bells that hadn't gone off since Orpheus rocked the Underworld with his song began to blare all around him in a cacophonous blast.
"Whoa!" Hades wildly gazed around his throne room, trying to determine what had set off his delicate security system. When out of nowhere, the soul that had just checked in came flying out from whence he came, reeling away like a fish caught on a hook.
For a second, Hades and his minions shared a moment. Blankly staring at each other before the god on his obsidian throne began to flare in rage. "That soul just left?! It left!" He roared more in surprise than anything. "Souls do NOT leave my Underworld!"
But amid his tirade, Hades sank in his throne still seething as his alarm system continued to deafen his ears, blaring louder than he could ever shout. One problem at a time, babe, he inwardly sighed. "And who has the code for this alarm?!"
Panic flinched at his boss' tone, but Pain was ready to cover for him. "Uhh, is it your mother's maiden name?"
"Which would be the same?!" Great balls of fire began to appear in Hades' hands before he launched them at his cowering imps.
Pain and Panic could only stand and take their boss' torment. However, his rage was short-lived when the alarms were abruptly silenced.
"Forgot about that," Pain woozily muttered before falling flat upon the floor.
The sudden absence of his alarms made Hades pause. He hadn't tried to turn them off, so what gives? Something told him, call it a hunch, it may have something to do with whatever caused that little blip he had just witnessed.
Hades didn't pay his minions any mind as he summoned his Tartarus Vision set with a snap of his fingers, and turned it on with a click of the remote.
The second time the soul had streaked across his vision, Hades had taken careful note of any meaningful characteristics, and now he understood where he had seen that face with his mismatched eyes and frazzled hair. He only knew of one schlemiel who had fried his brain and lived, and it just so happened to be his dear nephew's best friend.
Icarus.
Just as he had predicted, the TV set displayed Hercules standing beside the very soul that had somehow received a get out of the underworld free card, alive, but the location today's episode was set in well…
"Well, now what have we here?" Hades leered, the glow from the screen casting off a garish glow upon the dread lord of the dead as an idea began to come into being.
Pain and Panic, albeit a bit toasted, turned their attention to the screen.
"Uh-oh, what's Jerkules up to, boss?" Pain twittered unsurely, racking his brain at what exactly he was looking at.
"The nephew's gone tapestry weaving, huh?" Hades couldn't help the smirk that overtook his features as he noticed the unconscious body of a giant spider-like creature not far from where Hercules stood. "Boys, pack your bags. Looks like the nephew just hooked us up with a one way ticket out of this dump."
Hades paid no mind to any of the warning signs that displayed itself all around him as he delved deeper into the abode of the Fates followed by his loyal imps. After all, the Fates weren't here, and their guardian was certainly out for the count- all thanks to his dear, dense nephew.
"My nephew, my genius little nephew," Hades crooned as he made his way across the dark cavern that held the seemingly infinite Tapestry of Fate. Its glittering images vividly mirrored their real-life counterparts to a disturbing degree all along a garnet cloth that sprawled itself across the stalactites and the cavern floors like a carpet as it wound around the room like a giant snake circling its prey.
To think Hercules had changed fate for something so mundane. What kind of yutz decides to change the Tapestry of Fate- the very tapestry that described everything that had ever and will ever happen! He could've re-written it to make himself a god again, but the absolute bozo did it to get concert tickets?!
Not even to steal, mind you, but to buy concert tickets for a washed up musician who was well passed his prime ever since his muse decided to tour with Styx for eternity. Hercules risked the entire cosmos coming undone just for that?!
Jeez Louise, the lightning bolt really doesn't strike far from the cloud.
But the genius behind his nephew's plan?
Hades had never considered changing the Tapestry of Fate; it just seemed too risky. Even Zeus feared the power the Fates held. It was why he had ordered the three sisters to remain in a hidden lair far from prying eyes and had placed a guardian to prevent anyone from manipulating the tapestry, changing the world we know.
Maybe, just maybe, Hades thought as he circled around the unconscious guardian of the Tapestry, Arachne, He could try too.
"Why have I never thought of this?" Hades asked out loud, his imps attempting to keep pace with him.
Hades' eyes stretched across the room, trying to make sense of all the images that were in front of him. He had never been in here before- had never even seen the Tapestry of Fate, but had heard about it only in passing once during a meeting with the Fates several eons ago when they negotiated owning a little abode in his domain.
Seeing it now, the images of Gaia being born from Chaos represented as an erratic, unpredictable spiral that evolved into a series of infinite colors. The mere sight of it made the lord of the dead go dizzy the longer he gazed at it. In another, there was Kronos, wielding his scythe over the slain body of Ouranos, and there him and his siblings as they were trapped in their father's belly. The image of his own face frozen in a twisted mask of pain and panic made Hades quickly turn away.
The thumping of his blackened heart did not rest even as he distanced himself from that scene- at the only picture he'd ever seen of himself in his youth.
Turning away, however, proved to be a fatal mistake, when he found himself further along the timeline than he hoped. And in a scene that was all too familiar.
If the first image had brought back flashes of his messed up childhood and the anxious, overpowering feeling of terror, then this was by all accounts what made his heart drop into his own stomach, far deeper than the prison his father had thrown him in when he was but a babe.
There in full display was his long suffering wife.
Her eyes were closed, downcast and solemn with the palms of her hands encircling over her chest a bright almost fuchsia pomegranate. From the glittering fruit spawned a distinct line down the center that continued down the middle of her with either side displaying a contrasting image, representing her dual nature as goddess of life with her vibrant peony pink skin and a wondrous crown of lilies that mirrored her lily white peplos, and on the other side, the awful queen of the underworld who radiated power bedecked in full regalia with robes the color of night and the heavy decorations of silver, gold, and precious gems.
It was day and night in that very image. Generous spring and distant autumn who gave way to cruel, unforgiving winter. However, what truly captivated Hades' interest was the sight of her withdrawn face, an expression he had come to know after millennia. He could feel his heart tightening in his chest at the mere sight of her image.
Persephone.
Even thinking her name was like attempting to pull away at an arrow that had wound itself embedded deep into his chest. Every tug, every little movement gave way to merciless agony all because of a tiny little arrow head that had lodged in him for so long that the mere act of tearing it out would surely leave him like Ouranos, spilling his lifeblood to the world down below. One stray arrow was all it took to do him in, and at the moment it struck him, he lacked the sense to pull it out before it could reach its intended mark.
And there it stayed no matter how much he regretted it.
How a mere image of her could render more pain than the tedium of eons and loneliness down here was enough to make the flame-haired god's eyes begin to shine.
She'd been gone for three weeks. Three painless weeks. Her absence was always more bearable because he couldn't inflict more pain upon her than when she was locked down here with him. And when they were together…
Hades scowled and turned away in frustration. He didn't have time for this! Not when he was seconds away from literally rewriting history. "Pain! Panic! Find anything yet?!"
"Hang on," Panic twittered. "Gaia had a lot more kids than I remembered." The teal imp flitted from image to image until finally the two of them stumbled upon Zeus upon his heavenly throne while Hades sat below him in his own throne of volcanic obsidian.
"Your most lugubriousness, we found it!" Pain announced.
In a snap, Hades appeared by their side and didn't try to hold back the sneer he made at his brother's uncanny likeness upon the tapestry. "I've had enough of this bolt boy, but now this guy," he pointed at his own picture. "Hey whoa, now who's that handsome devil? Face like that shouldn't be tucked away back here in the dregs."
Hades began to tug at the tapestry, pulling it along with him as he began to ascend a circular stone staircase from where a giant, stygian loom was positioned at the center of the cavern.
The current section of the tapestry arranged upon the loom began to fall away to make room for the much older segment Hades was dragging along with him. Almost automatically, the loom began to accommodate, magically tightening the area that was about to be given a complete revision.
"How's our resume gonna look after all this?" Pain whispered to Panic.
Hades could feel his face contorting into a sordid smirk as he admired the many prongs of the loom and the glittering spool of thread that contained more magic than Hecate could ever dream of conjuring.
"Needles!"
Pain and Panic decked in surgeon's robes lifted the giant needles they had scrounged and handed them to Hades who took them with inflamed, impatient hands.
Carefully, just as he had been taught by Hestia, Hades gave them a rudimentary click clack like joints in an ancient skeleton.
Now how did it go?
"And two, pearl two, one, stitch two," Hades muttered to himself, trying to remember Hestia's mantra as his hands guided the needles to stab, strangle, and pull the thread across creating a whole new stitch.*
"And remember, Hades, don't get lost in the threads," Hestia had gently reminded him when she came to admire his loom. The keen-eyed goddess pondered at his work, and after a few moments of admiring his handiwork, she began to shake her head.
"You might just drop a stitch," Hestia carefully reached into the fabric for the smallest, seemingly unnoticeable little gap that indicated he had missed a stitch, or dropping one as the knitting community called it.
Her sunflower yellow hand reached towards the dropped stitch and began to tug, creating a massive gap right in the middle of his work. It had remained unnoticed, but now that it had been discovered, it had rendered a giant gaping hole in the middle of it, thanks to his own impatience. "All it takes is one to ruin the whole thing."
Hades could feel his whole body was shaking with anticipation. "This is it- this is it," he began to repeat to himself instead of his mantra.
The image began to assemble more and more with each click of the needles. Already the Olympian throne had a new proud figure sitting atop it, giving rise to the wicked leer upon Hades' long face. He could sense some part of him slipping away as he continued his task, but he wasn't just changing his fate.
Now, how could he possibly throw some more salt upon the wounds of his nephew?
Better yet, how to keep him in line?
With the finesse that Hestia would've been proud of, Hades clicked the needles together until finally everything was perfect- better than that- everything was his.
"Sayonara, babe, it looks like Olympus is about to be under new management," Hades saluted as he hurriedly tied up the loose ends. "Oh who am I kidding? They'll never even notice."
And everything went black.
*I was taught how to knit back in middle school and that was how my knitting teacher taught me through the "Viking Method" as she called it.
As always lmk what you think!
