Daughter of Darkness || Once Upon a Time

Chapter Thirty-Five | What Happened to Baby Hood

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|Ancient Greece|
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A crying baby caught the attention of a couple who was taking a walk in the calm night. The woman rushed over to the baby and picked her up, rocking her to quiet her cries.

"What's she doing out here?" the woman's husband asked.

"I don't know. Someone must have left her."

"Well what's her name?" the man stepped closer to is wife and looked over her shoulder at the infant she was holding.

The woman straightened out the part of the baby's blanket with a word stitched onto it. "Meg," she read, then frowned. "Short for Megara, perhaps?"

"Most likely. What should we do?"

"Well we can't just leave her out here!" The woman exclaimed. She looked back down at the baby's face. "Well, Megara, I guess we're your parents now."

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Megara was fourteen when she accidentally ruined her life.

Okay, so according to Hades, her birth parents had ruined her life long before that, but when she was fourteen, Megara ruined her life for the next couple millennium. She made the mistake of selling her soul to Hades in order to get her first love back. Before her soul was gone, Meg was one of the more popular girls in her village. Everyone knew her by her red hair and magic. Instead of fearing her powers, like her adoptive parents dreaded everyone would, the town thought she had been gifted by the gods. Namely Hecate, goddess of magic.

But after Meg traded her soul away, her life was just a steady decline for a long while. She thought it might get better when Hercules showed up, but that heartbreak turned out to be worse than the first was.

She met "Wonder Boy" when she was trying to get a centaur to strike a deal with Hades. Hercules had drove the centaur off with his super strength and Megara wondered if, perhaps, he had been gifted by the gods too. Meg had magic, Hercules had strength. Megara was sixteen when she met Hercules. Two years since her life had been ruined by her own stupid decisions.

"I had it under control!" Megara shouted at Hercules.

"Sure," he replied sarcastically, "because almost being killed by a centaur is classified as 'having everything under control'."

Meg rolled her eyes. "I was fine. What's your name anyways, Wonder Boy?"

"'Wonder Boy'?"

"If you insist on thinking you're the best--"

"Fine, fine. My name's Hercules. Who are you?"

Meg's eyes widened when she heard the name 'Hercules'. Hades told her he had turned a son of Zeus names Hercules into a mortal over a decade ago, a year and a half before Meg's adoptive parents had found her. But Hercules's super strength sure didn't make it seem like he was purely mortal...

Meg quickly recovered from the hearing Wonder Boy's name and answered the question, "My name's Megara. My friends call me Meg - or they would if I had any." She squeezed more water out of her hair and it dripped into the grass. Curse her thick hair and the centaur who had plunged her into a river. "Thanks for trying to save me, but I have things to do and places to be. Goodbye."

Meg walked past Hercules and flipped her hair in Hercules' face. His satyr friend began muttering things under his breath as Megara walked away.

"Focus, Herc! Don't let the pretty girl prevent you from being a hero!"

When Meg was out of Hercules' sight, a cloud of grey smoke blew past her and Hades materialized to her left.

"Yes?" Megara turned to face the god. "May I help you?"