Ferry of Woe [malexmale]

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

"You will have six brothers."

When Hades first told me this, I was excited. I had lived so long by myself, even when Hades wasn't in charge of the underworld. Most people had steered clear of me, including my own parents. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have siblings. One by one, Hades introduced me to them, and one by one, each one crushed a little part of me in different ways.

The first time I saw Cerberus, he'd been so incredibly tiny. Hades wouldn't share how he created Cerberus without the help of a wife. He merely told me that it'd been difficult and he had wanted to create Cerberus as an adult, but it would take too much effort to give him a personality and he wanted Cerberus to have a personality of his own. Something he probably sorely regretted several thousand years later.

Cerberus wasn't created as an infant, no, but as a toddler. He had been very small and he had a habit of sucking on his thumb. Unlike most parents who decked out their children in cute clothing and spoiled them with toys, gave them snacks and goodies and presents, Hades hadn't exactly met those standards. It was Hades's first time being a parent after all.

I had been there the whole time to watch him go through the difficult process of trial and error.

He tried to feed Cerberus formula and Cerberus puked it back up, so he went with crackers, which Cerberus broke up into pieces and scattered across the house. Hades finally made the right decision of giving Cerberus meat. He'd torn into it like a carnivorous lion. From there, Hades trained Cerberus to become more of a warrior than someone he called his child.

Years later, he had informed Cerberus and I that there was a beautiful siren he'd fallen in love with and he planned to make her his queen. Cerberus didn't want her at all.

"No," Cerberus had told me firmly, "I don't want a woman around here. Women are mean and annoying."

"Cerberus, you're just saying that because Hades lets the maids slap you if you misbehave."

"So?"

It was an odd conversation to remember between my brother and I.

Of course, nothing ever went as planned. Hades had discovered that his beloved was pregnant, with his child, and unlike his brothers who welcomed their children with open arms, Hades was horrified. He didn't want to become an actual father. He had no idea how to do it. He'd barely managed to take care of Cerberus, and Cerberus started off as a toddler. What would it be like to actually care for an infant? It scared Hades so bad, that when his beloved finally gave birth, he stole the child and threw it into Tartarus.

Eumelia, Hades's beloved siren, was struck with grief and went to Tartarus to rescue her baby. At the time, Tartarus was a feral land of tortured angry souls that wandered around in shackles. They were trapped in darkness and misery. When Eumelia appeared, she'd given off a bright light and lured them all to her, causing them to tear her apart, forgetting her infant. Hades had found out what happened, rescued Eumelia's child, and returned to the palace.

I don't think I'd ever seen Hades look so agonized. He didn't cry, but it took everything he had not to as he held the tiny infant in his arms.

"I can't kill him," Hades had told me, voice shaking, "It's the only thing I have left of her."

There was a time when Hades had been quite a softy, and sometimes, that part of him emerged again, but it seemed only Persephone could coax that out of him while the rest of us were trapped with the vicious backhanding.

Hades had kept Eumelia's infant, and named him Zelios. Zelios grew rather quickly because of his mixed blood and became a young man in no time. Very quiet, introverted, polite, and mature for his age.