Despite the reality of her situation beginning to sink in, she was brimming with curiosity. Her eyes roved all over the place. They had been met at the bank of a river by a single boat, upon which stood a man. Now that Hades was back in his realm, gone was the suit and in its place the very same sort of attire that the man on the boat wore. There was no other way to describe it than it was as if the darkness itself clothed them and it swayed around them like smoke, moving not unlike the shadows do in the dead of night.
She assumed that the man on the boat must be the Ferryman Charon, but he did not look at all how she would have expected. Instead of the skeletal figure she had always imagined, he had flesh and the deceptive face of a man in his early thirties. The only parts of him she could see were his face and his hands. His face may have looked young but his hands were withered and his fingers seemed unnaturally long. As he gripped the oar and pushed the boat off from the bank, she was dropped into the singular space to sit with force so in direct conflict to his withered hands, Charon appeared to have remarkable strength. Which when she thought about it made sense, after all the eons of pushing this boat along the river he must have been strong.
Speaking of the river, it had an almost eerie glow beneath the murky green colour and that glow seemed to shift as they travelled along. At first glance nothing seemed amiss but the longer she looked at it, she could see silhouettes swimming alongside the boat. She was about to ask Hades about it when she made direct eye contact with one of the silhouettes, they were souls! There was an intense fear in the eyes of the elderly woman she had made eye contact with and a ghostly hand raised itself above the water, reaching out for her.
She was about to reach back, to hold the woman's hand and comfort her if she could when Hades spoke.
"Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times."
The way he had seemed to know what she had been about to do shook her and she was about to say so when he spoke again.
"Probably best you don't look at them, they're tricksy little buggers. Some of them get ideas in what's left of their heads that they can escape their fate if they can trick someone into helping them out of the river." He said offhandedly, before adding with a wicked grin, "It wouldn't work of course. The sap that tried would just wither away, then they'd find themselves floating right alongside the person they tried to help."
"That seems so cruel." She said, now making a conscious effort not to look at the river as the woman she had been about to help began to wail.
"It's the underworld kid, they're dead. It's not supposed to be Disneyland." He shrugged. "Anyhoo, you have me at a disadvantage and that's not a position I enjoy. So let's fix that. You know my name, obviously, but I don't know yours."
"How can you not know my name? We made a bargain. Doesn't that generate a contract with my signature on it or something?" She asked him, confused.
He sighed, "Up top all I need to seal a deal is a handshake, the contract appears on my desk after. Soooo… What do I call ya?"
So far she had tried to avoid looking at Hades because it's rude to stare and that is exactly what it would have looked like she was doing, but now she looked up and was once again surprised by what she saw. When he had appeared outside the hospital he had looked like a shady businessman but down here, she couldn't pinpoint exactly the best words to describe him.
There was a cold aura surrounding him and his skin was a pale shade of blue, like she would have expected to see on someone who had died of hypothermia. The most remarkable part of his appearance was his hair. Up there it had been black as coal and slicked back in the sort of fashion she saw in movies set in the 50's. Now that they were back in the underworld it was a literal blue flame that flickered atop his head.
"Helloooo~ anyone home in there?" He said, knocking three times on her forehead as he said it.
"Sorry, sorry. Uh, my name was Charlotte." She said, already wondering if her name meant anything down here.
"Waddaya mean 'was'?"
"I guess I just assumed my name didn't matter anymore since I'm dead."
"Well, Charlotte, your name does matter. It's kinda the most important part of the deal on your end."
She decided she didn't like how he said her name, he had made it sound almost sinister.
"Then what's the most important part of the deal on your end?" She asked.
"My word, of course." Hades smiled, "That you'll get what you bargained for."
The cogs in her brain began to turn, "So because I saw you were true to your word, technically that means the deal is done. Right?"
"Oh, absolutely not. The deal is so far from done. I mighta held up my end of the bargain, but you still have to come through on your end."
"Okay but I didn't actually offer anything in return. I mean, obviously you got my soul instead of Claire's but since I'm here now and Claire's alive, that would mean the deal is done, so why am I here and not in there?" She said, motioning to the boat and then the river to illustrate her point.
"Would you rather be in there?" Hades asked, "Cause that can easily be arranged."
"No!" She shouted before calming herself and adding, "No. But there were no terms of servitude or anything like that involved in the deal which seems like a loophole in my mind. I guess what I'm asking is, what happens now?"
~ H ~
He didn't have an immediate answer for her. She was staring at him and he didn't know what to tell her. He decided to switch on the charm.
"Well there's a couple ways we can go from here, since you don't wanna swim in the river. If it's a purpose you're looking for, I could make you my assistant. Or…"
He watched as her brow furrowed, "Or what?" She said, suspicion dripping from her tone.
"Since you did worship me when you were alive, maybe you could worship me down here too." He said with an exaggerated wiggle of his brow.
Her disgust was painted across her face instantaneously and Hades reminded himself to keep his temper. "Yours wasn't the only altar I had you know, and I am not some whore that'll spread her legs just cause you're a god. I didn't just fuck men cause they did me a favour and I won't be doing it for a god."
So she had standards as well as brains and courage, providing he doesn't blow this she could be a real source of entertainment in this realm his brother had lumped him with. So he kept poking.
"By rights, my being a god does make me more worthy than mere mortals to be rewarded as such and besides, it's not like a mortal could have done for you what I did."
Hades watched with barely suppressed glee as she took the bait, her face twisting into a fierce scowl, "Oh so what? Are you saying I owe you? I won't argue with you there, I do owe you but the idea that you automatically should be rewarded with my body is such a pathetically mortal way of thinking." She said and under her breath he heard her add, "Can't believe I thought you of all the gods might be different. Mortals had to get their arrogance from somewhere I guess."
That stung a little more than Hades really wanted to admit. He was about to acquiesce to her point when the boat bumped against the shore of his island in the middle of the river and his minions came running up to him.
"The Fates are here, your Lugubriousness!" Panic mumbled, gnawing on his tail as he spoke.