Hercules slowly approached the celebrants in their purple robes and noted that there was no doubt by the slopes of their noses and the flash of their eyes that they were brothers to Megara and Megarion. They looked his way with a nod of respect and smiled at the sight of Harmonia. His chest tightened with the knowledge that they would've been good uncles to his daughter all along, but their sister had been robbed of them before they had the chance.
"Hail, sons of Creon," he said.
The two of them paused while serving wine and fully oriented themselves toward him.
"Are you the Mighty Hercules of whom we've heard so much?" asked the taller between the two of them.
"I am. Might you two be Menoikeus and Haemon of the House of Cadmus?" He bounced Harmonia, who he could feel stirring from his own confused emotions.
She was about to see her uncle for the first time. How would she respond? Would it be disorienting for her because they looked so much like her mother and uncle? Or would she instinctively recognize them as family and be at peace?
"I'm Haemon," the shorter, red-faced man stepped forward and offered his hand. The two of them clasped arms, and Hercules smiled, somewhat bewildered. "How do you know my humble name?"
"I make it my business to recognize family," Hercules replied.
The duo paused once more, giving Harmonia time to open her eyes and peer at them both with suspicion.
They saw her eyes, and their own widened.
"Do you mean to say this is my sister's child?" Menoikeus, the eldest, reached a shaking hand toward his niece. "May the gods be praised… is Megara yet living?"
"Yes," Hercules said solemnly. He would not mention how there had been a time when she was not.
There were tears in the eyes of both sons of Creon.
"I thought all was lost…" Haemon whispered in a low, broken voice.
"As did I," Menoikeus agreed. "Megara was always the strongest of us all. Her mind was tougher than bronze."
Hercules grinned. "You're right about that. Much of the time, I'm convinced that she's stronger than me." He stepped closer, holding Harmonia out for her uncles to inspect. "This is Harmonia. She's the sweetest, most intelligent little creature in the entire cosmos. I've seen the best of myself in her, and she takes after her mother as well. One day, I know she will show the whole world how incredible she is. We're all fortunate to be in her presence."
To his delight, Harmonia's uncles appeared to agree.
While the girl was still sleepy, she yawned and stretched, reaching toward their gentle hands and smacking at their fingers with flapping arms.
"The last I heard of you, Hades had some kind of plan related to your fates," Hercules said as gently as possible.
"Yes," Haemon replied. "The two of us were instrumental in his new plan for our sister. But ever since Dionysus pulled us out of the Underworld, we've been…" He scrunched his face up in discomfort.
"Drunk," Menoikeus said. "We're disoriented beyond our comprehension most of the time. This is the clearest thought I can remember having since I saw the sun."
"How long have we been dead?" Haemon asked.
"I can't say for certain," Hercules rubbed his neck in thought. "My daughter is about eight or nine months old. She was conceived… um…" he cleared his throat. "We were a little over one or two years from graduation?"
"Meg hadn't graduated high school when we died," Haemon said, drawing a glance of concern from Menoikeus. When he saw it, the younger brother sighed. "I uh… lost my life days after you."
Menoikeus set a hand on his brother's shoulder and didn't inquire further. "Where's Meggie?" he asked then. "I can't wait to hear how she got away from that actor."
Hercules winced. "It's definitely her story to tell." If she chose to. "As for me, I was fortunate enough to win her attention, and we saved the cosmos together."
"As I recall, Hades was fond of saying that Meggie was an ungrateful traitor who refused all the gifts he offered her," Menoikeus said with a hint of irony in the twist of his mouth.
"Yeah," Hercules exhaled a note of bitter laughter. He couldn't help but be amused by the sound of people calling her Meggie. She'd hate it. He couldn't wait to see her reaction! "He's been trying to drag her into the Underworld since before Moni was born."
"We were supposed to be her courtiers," Haemon said.
"Hades believed she would wish to rule over us and could be convinced to take up a position in the Underworld as his eternal possession if we were there for her to command," Menoikeus elaborated.
"Meg just wants to be around the people she loves," Hercules said. "Hades doesn't understand concepts like that unless he's using them as weapons."
"Then I thought snatching 'em would be funny, so I did!" Dionysus exclaimed. He threw an arm around Hercules's neck and Haemon's too. "But if Hades can play the game of building a court of minor immortals, so can I! Nobody stopped him, so there's precedent!"
"Are you positive Zeus won't punish us all?" Menoikeus asked.
"Zeus won't punish anyone for a while," Dionysus said with a broad grin.
"Rhea has returned from her imprisonment with the other Titans," Hercules explained. "She's returned my father to his infant state." Saying it out loud was almost too ridiculous to get through his teeth without laughing.
"The world's changing!" Dionysus said. "My brother and I seized immortality for ourselves, and now we can seize it for the ones we love whenever we please!"
Hercules hoped that was true. He smiled rather than try to examine how likely Dionysus's statement might be.
"If you're a god, what are you doing down here?" Menoikeus asked. "I suppose you were friends with Theseus before your apotheosis?"
"Yeah, that's right," Hercules said, glancing to the corner where Theseus sat bent over his cup of wine. "My wife is friends with his wife, too. She's here to support her through this even if her husband isn't."
Theseus's head bowed a little lower.
"Is Megara immortal, too?" Haemon asked.
Menoikeus smoothed a hand over Harmonia's hair. "The girl is mortal… or rather, I suppose she is a demigoddess. She must not be the daughter of two gods."
"True, my wife is… currently mortal. But I won't be without her, so I will make her immortal with me. With us." He bounced Harmonia to soothe her. The party music couldn't quite drown out the sound of Galatea's cries.
The grim expressions on both Theban men's faces drew out a defensive reaction from the young god.
"It's going to happen," Hercules insisted.
"I hope so for your sake," Menoikeus told him. "In life, we learned the way all Thebans do of the dread that comes with mortality."
"I will never let anyone harm her," Hercules said. "She's been through enough. She shouldn't have to suffer any longer."
"She's left quite the impression on you," Haemon marveled.
"When we were alive, men would always refuse to see her again after she showed her true colors," Menoikeus said. "Her attitude was unbearable for them."
"I happen to like her attitude," Hercules said. He grinned at the thought of her teasing and sighed, wishing she were with him now. "Ever since I met her, I've been intoxicated by her voice, her wits, and her beauty. She's… impossible to summarize…"
"Well, I'm sure your little one will show you the other side of it," Haemon said. "Meggie used to be the terror of the palace."
"Maybe she just had a lot to say that people weren't ready to hear," Hercules said defensively. He didn't know what he was talking about, obviously, but he'd be damned before he joined in on negativity toward Megara.
"Every child goes through a stage of defining their own boundaries and defining their preferences," Menoikeus said. "Meggie had plenty of opposition to fight against, and her iron will never broke, even when we had to pull our cousins off of her…" He cast his eyes to the ground. "We were always powerless to stop the beatings… they were sons of the king, and we were princes of the inferior branch… We could only stop them when we came across them."
Hercules tried to restrain the rage and heartbreak battling within him for the plight of a much smaller Megara. He'd once seen Thanatos summon an image of what she'd looked like as a little girl. Who could ever be so heartless as to beat a defenseless child, let alone one who seemed so vulnerable?
Some of his disgust and horror must have transferred to Harmonia. Her little mouth wobbled, and her eyes widened.
He had to stop this. "I appreciate what you did for her, and now I'm keeping all threats away from her. She's more protected than ever, no offense to either of you."
"I'm not offended in the least," Menoikeus said.
"I'm relieved," Haemon added.
The general positivity in their little cluster soothed Harmonia.
"I must ask, and please forgive me if it's an impertinent question, but it's owing to the setting that the thought occurred to me," Menoikeus prefaced with great evident discomfort.
"Go on," Hercules prompted and held Harmonia on his shoulder.
"How… how does Megara handle having a demigod child? I know that the joining of gods and mortals has inevitable results and… I only fear that she might not…"
Hercules rejected the idea before it could escape her brother's mouth. "She survived the last time, and she's healthier than ever. I believe in her." Though he stated that aloud, Hercules knew his lingering dread would show on his face. He hadn't remained celibate for her sake after the birth of Harmonia.
Yes, Megara had survived but had taken a long time to recover. He knew the toll that their first child had taken on her, and it was his blind faith alone that made him hold onto the idea that a second would not take still more from her. He'd kept her well fed and happy, granted her a life where she wanted for nothing… but was it enough? What if her body was even now unwinding around their second child, giving more to their child than it kept to sustain her?
He couldn't allow him to think of such things, but he couldn't stop, either. It was up to him to maintain morale. Megara tended toward negativity, and Harmonia sailed with any emotional headwind that blew her way.
He shouldn't think about the possibility of Megara's death at the hands of his own inability to find some other way to comfort her than intercourse. That would be his greatest failing.
He was doing this all wrong. His heart was fluttering with an ache for the pain that Megara would experience because of him and how he was powerless to stop it.
Harmonia reared back and screamed into the air for her mother.
Hercules gasped and worriedly struggled to wrangle the child, but she was red-faced and had her hands bunched up. She had him by the cape and was opening and closing the other hand as if to somehow grasp onto her mother.
Now he'd done it.